Subcortical Vascular Cognitive Impairment staged through cdr's functional subsum (cdr-func): Preliminary results from an outpatient sample

Staging vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) might be useful for sample selection in clinical trials and for guiding clinical decision-making. Clinical dementia rating (CDR) has been applied for staging cognitive impairments of different etiologies, but it may underestimate severity of non-Alzheimer's disease cognitive deficits. Out of a total of 147 elderly subjects, 23 (mean age: 72.95±7.51years; 56% female; mean schooling: 9.52±5.11years) fulfilled clinical and neuroimaging criteria for VCI. Correlations among cognitive and functional status and scores in CDR and its subsums (CDR Sum of Boxes – CDR-SoB - and CDR Functional Subsum – CDR-FUNC) were performed. Both CDR-SoB and CDR-FUNC correlated with global cognitive performance, functional status, CLOX 2, working memory and abstraction tests. CDR global score only correlated with functional status. CDR-FUNC, as well as CDR-SoB, appear to be better indexes of severity in VCI than CDR global score. •The CDR's Functional Subsum is proposed for staging vascular cognitive impairment.•CDR-FUNC correlated with scores in executive tasks, whereas CDR total score did not.•CDR-FUNC might be a better tool for staging vascular cognitive impairment than CDR.