Chemotherapy-induced prospective memory impairment in patients with breast cancer
Menée sur 40 patientes atteintes d'un cancer du sein traité par chimiothérapie adjuvante et sur 40 témoins, cette étude évalue les effets du traitement sur les performances de deux types de mémoire prospective
Objective : This study aimed to investigate the event-based prospective memory (EBPM) and time-based prospective memory (TBPM) in chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment in patients with breast cancer. Methods : Forty patients with breast cancer who underwent adjuvant chemotherapy and 40 age-matched and education-matched healthy women were administered with a battery of neuropsychological tests including EBPM and TBPM tasks. Results : A significant difference between breast cancer patients and controls was found in the scores on the mini-mental state examination (t = −11.684, p < 0.01), verbal fluency test (t = −7.939, p < 0.01), and digit span (t = −2.538, p < 0.05). Compared with healthy controls, breast cancer patients exhibited a poorer performance on EBPM (t = −7.096, p < 0.01) but not on TBPM (t = −1.921, p > 0.05). Conclusions : Our results suggest that breast cancer patients who had undergone adjuvant chemotherapy show deficits in EBPM but not in TBPM.