Objective: To explore the effectiveness and reliability of the Chinese version of Rapid Cognitive Screening (RCS) in the detection of cognitive impairment in acute stroke patients from China.

Methods: The original version of RCS was translated into Chinese version, and we recruited 42 acute stroke patients within one week of the disease course who were admitted to emergency department of First People's Hospital of Changzhou from January 2020 to May 2020.All participants were evaluated by Mini-Mental State Examination(MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and Chinese version of RCS respectively,and then we analyzed the clinical application value of the Chinese version of RCS inpatients with acute stroke systematically.

Results: The Chinese version of RCS was highly correlated with retest reliability [the in traclass correlation coefficient (ICC)=0.955], and it had high correlation of consistency between evaluators (ICC=0.983-0.992). The Chinese version of RCS was moderately correlated with MMSE (r=0.583, P<0.01) and MoCA (r=0.721,P<0.01), but its correlation with MoCA was higher than that of MMSE. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses showed that the area under the curve (AUC) of RCS and MoCA are 0.757 and 0.824 with MMSE as the gold standard, when cut off value was 5.5,the sensitivity and specificity for identifying cognitive impairment were 0.789 and 0.609, respectively.The AUC of RcS and MMSE were 0.929 and 0.894 with MoCA as the gold standard, when cut off value was 8.5 the sensitivity and specificity for identifying cognitive impairment were 0.714 and 0.913 respectively.

Conclusion:In the cognitive assessment of patients with acute stroke, the Chinese version of RCS is a simple, fast,and effective cognitive function screening tool with good effectiveness and reliability, and can be used as a rapid screening tool for cognitive function in patients with acute stroke.