Cognitive function assessment in patients with end- stage renal disease in Nigeria: A single center experience.

AIM: The purpose of this comparative study was to evaluate cognitive function in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients in comparison with age, sex, and level of education-matched control.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study involving 80 ESRD patients receiving maintenance hemodialysis treatment and recruited conservatively at the nephrology unit of our hospital. Eighty apparently healthy control, that were matched with the patients for age, sex and education, were also recruited. Following exclusion of depression and severe functional disability, a computer-assisted neuropsychological test, the FePsy, was used to assess  memory, psychomotor speed, concentration and attention using simple auditory and visual reaction time tasks, recognition memory tests (RMTs), finger tapping task, and binary choice task (BCT) for both the ESRD patients and controls.

RESULTS: ESRD patients performed worse on simple auditory and visual reaction time tasks (P < 0.05), RMTs (P < 0.05), finger tapping task (P < 0.05), BCT, and computerized visual search task (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSION: Performance in memory, psychomotor tasks, concentration, and attention tasks were found to be reduced among patients with ESRD compared with age, sex and level of education-matched control.