Practical cognitive screening tests, brief and easy-to-administer are needed for primary care. The Rapid Cognitive Screen (RCS) is one of the cognitive screening tests used. The present study aimed to establish the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of RCS (RCS-T) in patients with impaired cognitive status.

Prospective validation study.

Total 323 outpatients aged 60 or older, who were performed comprehensive geriatric assessment, were included in the study

Patients were screened by RCS-T, Turkish version of Saint Louis University Mental Status Examination (SLUMS-T), Mini–Mental State Examination (MMSE) and clock drawing test for cognitive impairment (CI).

The mean age of the patients was 72.2±7.4. Out of the patients, 217 were considered as cognitively intact, 54 as mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and 52 as Alzheimer's disease (AD). Cronbach's alpha value of the RCS-T was 0.674 for AD and 0.713 for CI. The total RCS-T scores were positively correlated with MMSE and SLUMS-T scores (r = 0.647 and r = 0.864, respectively) (p <.001, for each). The area under the receiver-operating characteristics curve (95% confidence interval) was 0.96 for AD, 0.92 for CI and 0.856 for MCI. The sensitivity and specificity for RCS-T for cut-off point of 6 and 4 were 85.85 (%) and 87.56 (%) for CI and 84.62 (%) and 91.14 (%) for AD, respectively.

In a bedside consultation and primary care practice, RCS-T, a simple, quick and sensitive tool for screening CI, seems to be a useful screening test for older patients with CI.