Abstracts

Rationale: Neuropsychologists strive to ensure that their patients receive a linguistically, culturally, and clinically competent evaluation (Judd et.al, 2009). The estimated Hispanic/Latino population of the United States as of 2010 is 50.5 million, and these speakers of Spanish constitute 16 % of the total U.S. population(U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). To date, there are only few, limited instruments available for administration of a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery that can be administered in Spanish with Spanish Speaking patients. Consequently, Spanish speaking patients with Epilepsy have presented a challenge when referred for presurgical neuropsychological evaluation. The neuropsychologist faces the challenge of determining what available measures in Spanish should comprise the battery of tests for presurgical assessment. The Meyers Neuropsychological System (MNS) is a system of neuropsychological assessment that utilizes the integration of a modified Rohling Interpretive Method and a profile matching approach, allowing comparison of patient group profiles with one's individual patient. The battery of tests that comprise the comparison groups are well validated and widely accepted instruments that are translated into Spanish. The present case review aims to demonstrate the utility of the MNS Spanish Form for presurgical neuropsychological assessment of monolingual Spanish-Speaking patients with documented temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Methods: The MNS was administered as part of a comprehensive battery for Spanish Speaking presurgical Epilepsy patients who were non-English, monolingual speakers of Spanish. The patients included one male patient and one Female patient. Both patients had TLE confirmed by EEG-video monitoring, MRI, and PET scan. One was a patient with Right TLE, whereas the other was a patient with Left TLE. Mean age was 35. Both patients were administered a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment as part of their presurgical evaluation and the MNS was used to generate a comparison data base with which to compare each patient's profiles to profiles of patient groups that had right TLE or left TLE. Results: The MNS was used to compare the domain profiles of each patient to the comparison groups of patients with, right TLE, left TLE, Left learning disorder, and Right learning disorder. There were strong correlations between the patient's profiles and that of the normative samples for patients with these disorders. Conclusions: The results of the present pilot study indicate that the MNS is a viable system for use as part of a comprehensive battery for assessing presurgical epilepsy patients who are monolingual speakers of Spanish. The scoring system provides for the assessment of many of the domains of behavior and cognition that are dependent on adequate brain functioning, uses regression based norms, has built in symptom validity check measures, and has comparison groups based on more than 8,000 patients with a variety of central nervous system disorders including epilepsy.