The Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination III (ACE-III): linguistic and cultural adaptation into Russian

Introduction. Timely identification of cognitive impairment is very important, with standardized screening instruments required to assess the cognitive status. However, the arsenal of such screening scales available to clinicians in Russia is limited and requires expansion. According to numerous international studies, the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination III (ACE-III) has the necessary sensitivity and specificity, which speaks well for developing and validating a Russian language version. The aimof the study was the linguistic andcultural adaptation of the Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination III (ACE-III). Materials and methods. A forward and back translation was performed of three versions of the scale and the scoring guidelines. A preliminary version of the ACE-IIIwas developed, pilot testing ofthe preliminary versionwas conducted, anda finalRussianlanguage versionwas thendevelopedwiththe help ofa philologist/linguist, andexperts inneuropsychologyandneurology, whoworkspecificallywithpatients withcognitiveimpairments. Pilottestingofthe preliminaryversion of the ACE-III involved 16 neurological patients at the Research Center of Neurology and the Pirogov National Medical and Surgical Centre, who were aged 37–74 (60.25 ± 10.8) years and 56%of whom were women. The patients’ clinical condition corresponded to the diagnostic criteria for cerebrovascular disease (n=12), Parkinson's disease (n=3) andspinocerebellar ataxia (n=1). Results. Neither the subjects nor the examiners hadany difficulty in understanding the instructions or the content during testing. Further workwas done basedon the results of the pilot testing, and three final versions of the scale (A, Band C) were accepted, as well as the scoring guidelines, a link to which is provided in the article. Conclusion. The obtained results indicate that the developed version of the ACE-III can be understood by the Russian-speaking population and can be used in clinical practice. At the time of article publication, researchis being conductedto assess the psychometric properties of the final Russian language version.