Frontal Executive Function Assessment in Patients with Parkinson Disease Using Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB) at a Tertiary Care Center in Western India

Background: Cognitive impairment in Parkinson disease (PD) primarily consists of executive dysfunction. Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB), composed of six subsets to explore different functions related to the frontal lobe is a validated and easily performed tool for executive function assessment. Aims and Objectives: We performed this study to evaluate the clinical utility of the FAB for the assessment of executive dysfunction in PD and to study the correlation of FAB with other tests of executive functions such as fluency tests (lexical and semantic) and trail making tests (TMT A and B) in a group of Indian patients with PD. Material and Methods: We included 60 patients diagnosed with PD per the UK PD Brain Bank criteria. Our study included 40 healthy age, sex, and education-matched controls. We recorded clinical characteristics of patients [age, sex, disease duration, Hoehn and Yahr stage, and Unified Parkinson disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) scores] and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and FAB scores of both patients and controls in a prescribed pro forma. Results: In the study group, mean age was 52.53 ± 10.42 years, mean disease duration was 5.77 ± 3.27 years, mean MMSE was 28.4 ± 1.53, and mean FAB was 11.53 ± 2.30, and they had significantly decreased mean FAB scores as compared to controls. FAB scores also correlated significantly with age, disease duration, Hoehn and Yahr stage, UPDRS score, MMSE, fluency tests, and TMT. Conclusion: FAB is an easily performed bedside screening test for executive function assessment in PD, and it can be used to detect early and subtle cognitive impairments in PD.