Early recognition of neurocognitive disorders: Dementia screening in primary care and the detection of mild cognitive impairment via verbal fluency tests

Cognitive disorders represent a worldwide problem: at present, more than 55 million people are living with dementia, and the number of cases is estimated to reach around 150 million by the year 2050 (Nichols et al., 2022).Early diagnosis of the disease is pivotal as it provides patients with a higher chance of benefiting from their treatment, while also aiding them and their relatives to access relevant information regarding the condition, to cope, and to plan for the future.Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a heterogenous syndrome, characterized by a subtle deficit of memory, language, and executive skills, and is often considered the prodromal stage of dementia.Thus, it plays a major role in the identification of individuals at risk of dementia.Primary care is another significant factor in the recognition process: as in many health systems, GPs are the first contact point for elderly patients seeking health care, they are in a unique position and as gateways, they play a major role in the recognition of cognitive decline.Despite this, high rates of undetected dementia in primary care are a widespread problem.The evaluation of GPs' routines could help us to enhance the currently low recognition rates.Since barriers toward effective dementia detection include the low use of cognitive assessment methods, it is crucial to offer healthcare providers cognitive screening tools that are quick, simple, and can yield objective and reliable results.This thesis comprises the results and conclusions drawn from two original research articles.In the first paper, our main goal was to assess Hungarian GPs' routines and views regarding the screening of dementia in primary care practices.The aim of the second study was to introduce a new approach to the analysis of verbal fluency tests.In this method, we created temporal parameters based on the silent segments, the hesitations, and the irrelevant utterances found in the fluency voice recordings.