Washington – The cognitive test on which U.S. President Donald Trump received a perfect score is considered a good screening tool for mental decline in an otherwise healthy person, medical experts said.
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Trump asked to be administered a mental test and was given the Montreal Cognitive Assessment as part of a medical exam by Dr. Ronny Jackson, the White House physician, who on Tuesday said he had absolutely no concerns about Trump’s neurological function. Trump scored 30 out of 30.
Cognitive testing looks for signs of mild cognitive impairment and/or Alzheimer’s disease. Sample questions on the Montreal test include repeating a set of numbers in order both forwards and backwards and remembering a list of common words. Test takers are asked to identify animals, and draw a clock face, putting in all of the numbers and setting the clock hands to a specific time, as well. It takes about 10 minutes to administer.
In general, patients with good or average memory forget one of the five words and can still be within the normal range, said Dr. James Mastrianni, an expert in memory disorders and other neurodegenerative conditions at the University of Chicago Medicine.
“It’s a screening assessment that we use routinely in the clinics to determine whether someone has some degree of cognitive impairment or not,” he said.
“If they score poorly on that assessment, then usually there is more detailed evaluation that follows. But if they score well that usually indicates there is pretty good cognitive function. They are essentially intact,” Mastrianni added.
The standard version of the test is “pretty good” but “not definitive” said Dr. Ronald Petersen, an Alzheimer’s disease expert at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Petersen said he could not comment specifically on the president’s cognitive health.
The test does not assess the president’s psychiatric fitness and the president did not undergo a psychiatric evaluation, according to his doctor.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, there is no single test that proves a person has Alzheimer’s disease. That diagnosis is made through a complete assessment that considers all possible causes.
Great and why would he need more than that? Does me or you need?
These rumors about Alzheimer’s should cease. Whereas a few of the questions which the reporters asked yesterday were intelligent, most were either stupid (i.e. “Is the President addicted to drugs; what about all the TV he watches and his use of Twitter; what is his life expectancy”), or obnoxious. It appears that the press was on a fishing expedition, and were determined to find something wrong with Trump, in spite of medical evidence to the contrary. Even when Admiral Jackson intelligently answered all of the questions, there were many skeptics. Some of the reporters kept repeatedly asking the same dumb questions, even when they were answered in their entirety. For example, Admiral Jackson stated that he would start Trump on a treadmill, an elliptical, and other aerobic exercises. However, that wasn’t good enough, as one asinine reporter asked “What about the exercise program Obama was on, can’t he do that”. Even Dr. Sanjay Gupta gave Admiral Jackson respect, vis-a-vis his medical opinion. Whether you love Trump or hate him, you will have to admit that yesterday’s briefing on Trump’s health, was the most extensive one ever, of any American President in history!
How did Abraham Lincoln do on this test?
Old German Jewish joke told by my father, zt”l:
A man got a flat tire, and pulled off the road close to a mental hospital, and next to a rather steep ravine. He jacked up the car, took off the four nuts securing the car’s wheel, and carefully put them in the removed hubcap. He then clumsily knocked the hubcap, with the nuts, down the ravine.
The man gets up, grabs his head in his hand and bemoans “Oy, now what am I going to do?”
An inmate in the mental hospital, looking out of a barred window, shouts “Relax fella…take one nut off of each of the remaining wheels, use them to secure the last wheel…and then carefully drive to where you can get replacements for all the wheels.”
Perplexed, the man looks up at the window, saying “What? You’re an inmate in a mental hospital!”
The inmate replies “Hey, I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid!”
Cognitive skills have nothing to do with the questions raised as to Trump’s mental stability.
nitpicking every single thing about our great president is exhausting to read. are we seriously dissecting the ‘ten-minute routine’ test now??!! and if it were a ten-hour test, the snowflakes would be crying that it wasn’t the ten-minute routine one.
the press doesn’t feel this exhaustion because it’s fueled by the jealousy it has of our greatest president. he is an ohev yisroel (strike one), independently wealthy (jealous snowflakes like to throw his bankruptcy as a dagger, but he prospered anyway, so that’s strike two) and he and his family are Ivy League educated, successful, gorgeous, elegant and classy (all attributes that liberals loathe, since they strive for it but can attain some and not all, so there’s strike three)
when will the press give up??! Trump…MakingAGA!
To YonasonW-With your one liners, and quick wit, you should have entertained in the now defunct Borscht Belt!