French normative data for the Complex Rey Figure Test in healthy subjects aged over 80 years

Abstract

International audienceTo our knowledge, there are few studies on the cognitive assessment of very old people, over 80 years old in the French population. However, this population, which currently represents 6% of the French population, is particularly affected by dementia (nearly 30% of the population is over 90 years old according to Gil in 2018) and is expected to double by 2080 (Eurostat, 2021). Rey's complex figure test is commonly used to assess visual memory, motor functions, perceptual abilities, and executive functions. This test is part of the minimal neuropsychological assessment to participate in the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, as recently recalled by Guichard-Gomez and Hahn (2020). There are many normative data in adults (Fastenau et al, 1999; Casanova et al, 2009; Tremblay et al, 2015; Darwish et al, 2018; Tsatali et al, 2022) but the age group of over 80 years is not well specified. We present here the results of a study of 109 healthy French subjects, aged over 80 years, from the FIBRATLAS cohort. Rey's figure was thus proposed in copy, immediate recall, and delayed recall. We considered both score and time of completion of the 3 tasks. The impact of age and education on test performance was examined. The analysis showed a gender effect for all 3 tasks. There was an effect of education on the completion time of the figure copying task and on the delayed recall score. Based on these analyses, we propose to use in clinical practice, for a French-speaking population of more than 80 years old, normative data established in percentiles, considering gender and education level