Agm. Vanoosterhout et al., FOLLOW-UP OF COGNITIVE-FUNCTIONING IN PATIENTS WITH SMALL-CELL LUNG-CANCER, International journal of radiation oncology, biology, physics, 31(4), 1995, pp. 911-914
Citations number
21
Categorie Soggetti
Oncology,"Radiology,Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging
Purpose: Study of the course of possible treatment-related cognitive i
mpairment in patients with small cell lung cancer, Methods and Materia
ls: Thirty-two consecutive patients with small cell lung cancer underw
ent successive neurologic and neuropsychologic examinations until 5 mo
nths after prophylactic cranial irradiation, and in their pretherapeut
ic condition were compared to matched controls, Patients with brain me
tastases were excluded from this study, Results: Neurologic examinatio
n revealed central nervous system (CNS) abnormalities only in the 14 p
atients with brain metastases, In the remaining patients, neuropsychol
ogic tests showed clear differences between the pretherapeutic perform
ance of patients and that of matched controls (p < 0.001), but no sign
ificant deterioration either during or after therapy (0.1 < p < 0.8),
Conclusion: The difference between the pretherapeutic performance of p
atients and that of matched controls may indicate disease-related cogn
itive impairment. Within the observation period, no adverse effects of
the used therapy were found, Our observations underline the importanc
e of a pretherapeutic assessment in neurotoxicity research.