Background:
The aim of the present study was to determine whether the Brief Evaluation of Alcohol‐Related Neuropsychological Impairments (BEARNI), a screening tool developed to identify neuropsychological deficits in Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) patients, can also be used as a relevant tool for the early identification of AUD patients at risk of developing Korsakoff’s syndrome (KS).

Methods:
Eighteen KS patients, 47 AUD patients and 27 healthy controls underwent BEARNI (including five subtests targeting episodic memory, working memory, executive function, visuospatial abilities and ataxia) and a comprehensive neuropsychological examination.

Results:
Performance of AUD and KS patients on BEARNI subtests is in accordance with the results on the standardized neuropsychological assessment. On BEARNI, ataxia and working memory deficits observed in AUD were as severe as those exhibited by KS patients, whereas for visuospatial abilities, a graded effect of performance was found. On the opposite, the subtests involving long‐term memory abilities (episodic memory and fluency) were impaired in KS patients only. AUD patients with a score lower than 1.5 points (/6) on the episodic memory subtest of BEARNI could be considered at risk of developing KS and exhibited the lowest episodic memory performance on the neuropsychological battery.

Conclusions:
These findings suggest that BEARNI is a relevant tool to detect severe memory impairments, thus making early identification of AUD patients at high risk of developing KS possible.