ArticleBMJ open2025
Development of a rapid screener through network analysis to identify central cognitive complaints in haemodialysis patients: a cross-sectional study.
Article in BMJ open, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesCognitive impairments and cognitive complaints are commonly present in dialysis patients and can affect clinical, functional, occupational, and psychosocial well-being. It is important to screen for patients' cognitive status as it offers a gateway to specialty referral, prevention or rehabilitation programmes, and personalisation of clinical care. The Patient's Assessment of Own Functioning Inventory (PAOFI) is a comprehensive questionnaire that assesses patient-reported difficulties in memory, language, motor/sensory-perceptual skills and higher-level cognitive function. In the current study, we adopted network analysis to identify central cognitive complaints in dialysis patients and derived a PAOFI short form (PAOFI-SF) based on these core symptoms to improve screening efficiency in real-world renal settings.
designMulticentre, cross-sectional study.
settingParticipants were recruited from 10 community-based dialysis centres in Singapore, from May to November 2022.
participantsA total of 369 eligible haemodialysis patients were invited to join the study, and 268 completed the measures (response rate 72.6%). OUTCOME MEASURES: Cognitive assessment tools including the PAOFI and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment were administered.
resultsBased on the PAOFI measure, 98 participants (36.6%) endorsed the presence of three or more complaints, indicating clinically significant cognitive complaints. Network analysis identified five central cognitive complaints among dialysis patients: problem-solving difficulty, difficulty following instructions, forgetting how to do tasks, difficulty being understood, and forgetting people known years ago. These core items were combined into a five-item short form of PAOFI, which showed good reliability and validity, and an area under the curve of 83.4% in identifying clinically significant cognitive complaints. The optimal cut-off point of the short form was 11.5 (out of 30), with a specificity of 89.5%, sensitivity of 63.9%, positive predictive value of 77.5% and negative predictive value of 81.4%. This cut-off point also predicted objective cognitive performance even after controlling for sociodemographic and clinical confounders.
conclusionsPending future replication and external validation, the PAOFI-SF may be suitable for use in renal care settings as an initial screening tool to identify patients with cognitive complaints and increased risk of objective cognitive impairments.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.