Kimchi EY, et al. - In this work, the objective was to survey the current methods used to ascertain dementia and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in longitudinal cohort studies, to categorize differences in approaches and to identify key components of expert panel methodology in current use. There appeared wide variation regarding methods used for expert panel diagnosis of MCI and dementia in large cohort studies. Authors identified the necessity for more standardized reporting of these approaches. They hoped to encourage the development and publication of well-founded and reproducible methods for diagnosis of MCI and dementia in longitudinal studies by describing the procedure in which the expert panel achieved consensus diagnoses.