Diagnostic accuracy of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment in screening for cognitive impairment in initially hospitalized COVID-19 patients: Findings from the prospective multicenter NeNeSCo study

This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and nature of cognitive impairment among severely ill COVID-19 patients and the effectiveness of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) in detecting it. We evaluated cognition in COVID-19 patients hospitalized during the first wave (March to June 2020) from six Dutch hospitals, nine months post-discharge, using a comprehensive multi-domain neuropsychological test battery. Test performance was corrected for sex, age, and education differences and transformed into -scores. Scores within each cognitive domain were averaged and categorized as average and above ( -score ≥ -0.84), low average ( -score -1.28 to 0.84), below average ( -score -1.65 to -1.28), and exceptionally low ( -score < -1.65). Patients were classified with cognitive impairment if at least one domain's -score fell below -1.65. We assessed the MoCA's accuracy using both the original cutoff (