Background

This review will evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the Rowland Universal Dementia Assessment Scale (RUDAS) for the detection of dementia in people in community settings, and in primary and secondary healthcare settings. The RUDAS was developed in 2004 in Australia, and designed to overcome the difficulty of detecting dementia in culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations (Storey 2004). Existing bedside cognitive tests, such as the Mini‐Mental State Examination (MMSE (Folstein 1975)), and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA (Nasreddine 2005)), are widely used, but pose difficulties when trying to diagnose people with low literacy, or those from non‐English speaking backgrounds (Jones 2001; Tombaugh 1992). The RUDAS was designed to be used with interpreters in multiple languages, and therefore, is a useful generic cognitive assessment tool for multi‐ethnic communities. Early diagnosis and treatment for dementia is important, and this review is an important step in determining the accuracy of a screening tool that is suitable for CALD populations.