The primary symptom of fibromiyalgia is chronic, widespread pain accompanied by diffuse tenderness to light palpation however, a decrease in concentration and memory are further complaints that add significantly to the degree of suffering [1]. It is one of the rheumatic illnesses with the greatest impact on patient quality of life, having negative consequences on their capability including intellectual activity, personal relationships and professional career to the extent where the patient requires multiple intervention strategies [2,3].
 
Patients with FM have reported that they were unable to perform demanding cognitive tasks at their previous level [4]. Especially patients with jobs that have high cognitive/technical demands are likely to perceive their performance in the workplace to be seriously compromised [4]. In addition many of them have stated that cognitive dysfunction was a more disturbing and disabling symptom even than pain [4]. Thus, perceived decreased cognitive ability is an important factor affecting whether some patients can continue to work or return to their daily life with their previous capacity and it should be handled with care during the course of the disease in patients with FM.
 
Despite the importance of the cognitive symptoms and the experts' recommendation to evaluate them as a part of the standard FM assessment in clinical setting, information on the evaluation of cognitive status limited to a few studies [5]. These studies mainly used more complicated and less clinically feasible of neuropsychological test evaluations. The number of studies conducted with subjective cognitive tests in patients with chronic pain including FM was quite low [5,6]. Andreu at al have evaluated the cognitive complaints by using Mini Mental State Examination which was one of the subjective cognitive tests and found that there was high frequency of cognitive impairment in patients with FM compared with the population reference value [5].
 
Results from neuropsychological tests showed that patients with FM perform more poorly on a range of cognitive tasks than carefully matched adults of similar age and performed similarly to people 20 years older [7-9]. But, up to date, there is no study exist in the literature comparing the subjective complaints of FM patients with older-aged and healthy age-matched groups. So; the objectives of this analysis were as follows: First, to evaluate the severity and distribution of cognitive complaints in patients with FM and older-aged group using a brief and quantitative subjective measure of the cognitive status in adults such as the Short Test of Mental Status. Second; to determine whether some differences exist between these groups in terms of cognitive subdimensions and their relations with clinical and demographical variables.

Citation: Öncü J, ilişer R, Kuran B (2015) Cognitive Complaints in Patients with Fibromyalgia Versus Older-Aged Women: Case Control Study. J Psychiatry 18:242. doi: 10.4172/Psychiatry.1000242

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