To analyze the performance of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Hearing Impairment (MoCA-H) in Brazilian Portuguese in neurologically healthy older adults, comparing those with normal hearing and those with hearing loss who use hearing aids.
Audiologists and multidisciplinary teams screening Brazilian Portuguese-speaking older adults for cognitive decline should be aware of the MoCA-H adaptation, but should await further validation before replacing standard tools.
Cognitive screening tools unadapted for hearing loss risk misclassifying older adults as cognitively impaired, so validating a hearing-adapted version in Portuguese fills a critical clinical gap.
- 01Study evaluates the Brazilian Portuguese adaptation of the MoCA-H in neurologically healthy older adults.
- 02Participants were compared across groups with and without hearing loss.
- 03The MoCA-H modifies standard cognitive screening to reduce the confounding effect of hearing loss.
- 04Published in CoDAS, focusing on a Portuguese-speaking population with limited adapted tools.
- 05Findings bear on how cognitive impairment is screened in older adults attending audiology clinics.
The Brazilian Portuguese MoCA-H can distinguish cognitive screening performance between older adults with and without hearing loss.
studypartially supportedStandard cognitive assessments may produce different results for individuals with hearing loss compared to hearing-adapted versions.
studypartially supported- PMID
- 42417819
- DOI
- 10.1590/2317-1782/e20250242pt.
- Journal
- CoDAS
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 2b
- Population
- Neurologically healthy older adults in Brazil, with and without hearing loss
- Intervention
- Montreal Cognitive Assessment Hearing Impairment (MoCA-H) in Brazilian Portuguese
- Comparator
- Neurologically healthy older adults without hearing loss
Primary outcomes
Cognitive screening performance on MoCA-H across hearing loss and normal-hearing groups