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A Quick Mental Status Examination (QMSE) has been designed to screen for cognitive impairments in a wide variety of neurological and psychiatric patients. The initial results in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients revealed that 50 percent scored lower than the lowest score registered by normal controls matched for age, sex and education. The QMSE detects clinically significant cognitive impairment in a large subgroup of MS patients and correlates reasonably well with other measures of dysfunction. This method of mental status assessment is easily and rapidly administered, and offers considerable potential as a screening procedure for cognitive impairment in MS patients.