The abbreviated mental test score (AMTS) was introduced by Hodkinson in 1972 to rapidly assess elderlypatients for the possibility of dementia. Its uses in medicine have become somewhat wider, e.g. to assess for confusion, although it has mainly been validated in the elderly. 1972 was a leap year that started on a Saturday. ... Old age consists of ages nearing the average lifespan of human beings, and thus the end of the human life cycle. ... In semantics, the patient is the passive part of a process. ... Dementia (from Latin demens) is progressive decline in cognitive function due to damage or disease in the brain beyond what might be expected from normal aging. ... Medicine is a branch of health science concerned with maintaining health and restoring it by treating disease. ...
The following questions are put to the patient. Each question correctly answered scores one point. A score of less than 6 suggests dementia, although further and more formal tests are necessary to confirm the diagnosis.
Question
Score
What is your age?
What is the time to the nearest hour?
Give the patient an address, and ask him or her to repeat it at the end of the test
What is the year?
What is the name of the hospital or number of the residence where the patient is situated?
Can the patient recognize two persons (the doctor, nurse, home help, etc.)?
What is your date of birth?
In which year did the First World War begin (adjust this for a world event the patient would have known during childhood)?
What is the name of the present monarch (head of state, etc.)?
Count backwards from 20 down to 1?
Ypres, 1917, in the vicinity of the Battle of Passchendaele. ...
Reference
Hodkinson HM. Evaluation of a mental test score for assessment of mental impairment in the elderly. Age Ageing 1972;1:233-8. PMID 4669880.
The AMT affects taxpayers who have what are known as "tax preference items." These include long term capital gains, accelerated depreciation, percentage depletion, and certain tax-exempt income, which are all considered to have favorable tax treatment and could trigger the alternative minimum tax.
The AMT disportionately affects those who live in wealthier areas with higher cost of living and areas with higher state and local taxes, areas which are primarily represented by Democrats.
Thus, many Democrats favor a tax reform of the AMT which would benefit primarily those who would be objectively viewed as wealthy by the standard of the country as a whole or their incomes, although they only live a middle class lifestyle.
He argued the AMT was intended to apply only to wealthy taxpayers, but the court could not disregard the statutory provisions of the Internal Revenue Code.
The mechanical application of the AMT rules required disallowance of the legal fees as a miscellaneous itemized deduction even though it was arguably unfair to tax the punitive damages and at the same time disallow expenses incurred in generating that income.
If a person was paying the AMT in 2002, he or she would probably still be paying the AMT in 2003, but the total tax would be less.