Background
: The prevalence of dementia is estimated to be as high as 5-10% over 65 years of age in Korea. it is important to evaluate of dementia for the elderly, Because of the chronicity and progressiveness of the disease. However, cognitive impairment often goes unrecognized by physician because the many previous tools to evaluate cognitive function in the clinical setting are complex, time-consuming and sometimes questionable correlation with real world functioning. The purpose of this study is to assess the usefulness of T도 Time and Change test as screening test for dementia, on the basis for the correlation between this measure(T&C) and MMSE-K.

Methods : The subject for this study consisted of 64 elderly who visited to the outpatient depa-rtment of family medicine of the Ehwa Mok-dong hospital or Elderly Welfare Center in Seoul. They received the T&C test and MMSE-K examination. Sensitivity, specificity, negative predictive value, and Pearson' Correlation coefficient were calculated using standard formulas.

Results : The T&C had a sensitivity of 505, a specificity of 88%, a positive predictive value of 60%, a negative predictive value of 77%, respectably. when timed cutpoints were added, The T&C test had a sensitivity of 95%, specificity of 83%m a positive predictive value of 75%, a negative predictive value of 97%. respectivaly.

Conclusion : The Time and Change(T&C) tests can be an effective, simple and performance based tool to recognize dementia. Further validation with a representative elderly sample is needed to establish screening value in primary care of community populations.