Properly Assessing Cognition in Patients With Multiple Sclerosis: John DeLuca, PhD

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“Once you have the assessment, you also have to have a plan for treatment, and that’s more challenging. These are times where you refer out to [specialists]. If your patient has a cardiac problem, you refer them to a cardiologist. If the person has a cognitive problem, you should be referring out to a cognitive expert.”

Cognitive challenges and impairment have become a higher priority topic of conversation among patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and their physicians. At the 2022 Consortium of MS Centers (CMSC) Annual Meeting, June 1-4, in National Harbor, Maryland, this was a focus of several presentations given by experts in the care of these individuals. Although, these issues are not always a focal point of day-to-day clinical care.

John DeLuca, PhD, the senior vice president for research and training at the Kessler Foundation, and a professor in the departments of physical medicine & rehabilitation and neurology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, told NeurologyLive® that often, unfortunately, the challenges in addressing these problems—and the time it takes to conduct assessments—serve as roadblocks to optimal management. For DeLuca, though, in the context of a patient with controlled disease, experiencing cognitive issues is commonly top of mind, and thus should be of similar importance for clinical care.

DeLuca offered up his advice to clinicians for how to best incorporate these assessments into their care regimens and stressed the importance of setting a baseline as early as possible in order to identify issues similarly early.

Click here for more coverage of CMSC 2022.