|
 “We don’t really know the prevalence, but maybe 40 to 50 percent of
individuals (treated with chemotherapy) have long-term mild memory
problems with verbal memory, recall of conversations, what one
read,” said lead author Robert Ferguson of the University of
Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.
“Remembering where you parked your car or what was said in a
meeting, these daily routine tasks are where failures occur,” said
Ferguson, who conducted the research while at the Eastern Maine
Medical Center and Lafayette Family Cancer Center in Bangor, Maine.
Ferguson’s team wanted to know whether a cognitive-behavioral
therapy called “Memory and Attention Adaptation Training” (MAAT)
would be helpful if it were delivered by video conference.
They recruited 47 Caucasian women who had completed chemotherapy for
breast cancer an average of four years earlier and were still
reporting memory problems. They randomly divided the women into two
groups.
One group received eight 30- to 45-minute MAAT one-on-one sessions
with a therapist via video conference. MAAT therapists help patients
identify which types of memory loss are attributable to chemotherapy
and which are not, and what types of situations increase the risk
for memory lapses. They also teach stress reduction, and strategies
like verbal rehearsal and visualization training to compensate for
memory lapses.
The other group of women received eight video conference sessions of
supportive talk therapy, with no active behavioral training.
The women completed questionnaires on memory difficulty and anxiety
about memory problems and had neuropsychological tests of verbal
memory and processing speed before therapy, after their eight
sessions and again two months later.
At the final follow up, women who received MAAT therapy had fewer
self-reported memory problems, their processing speed test results
were better and they had less anxiety about memory problems than
those in the comparison group.
Verbal memory was similar for both groups after treatment and at the
two-month point, as reported in Cancer.
Both therapies were delivered by video conference to eliminate
travel time for patients. More than half of participants said they
would not have taken part if they’d had to travel or take time off
from work to attend the therapy sessions, Ferguson said.
[to top of second column] |
Though the MAAT program was beneficial, “we don’t know (if) memory
returns to pre-cancer levels,” he said.
Certain rehabilitation interventions try to ‘rewire the brain’ to
get it back to former levels of function, whereas MAAT therapy tries
to tailor the intervention to the individual and identify their
deficits, said Tim A. Ahles, a behavioral psychologist at Memorial
Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York who has worked with
Ferguson in the past but was not part of the new study.
“It reduces anxiety and stress, which interfere with cognitive
performance, regardless of your history,” Ahles told Reuters Health
by phone.
Researchers have been studying chemotherapy’s affect on the brain
for more than 15 years, but it’s still unclear why only certain
people experience cognitive deficits, he said.
The current study only included white breast cancer survivors at one
site, and each treatment was delivered by one clinician, Ferguson
noted. Future studies should incorporate multiple sites, multiple
clinicians, and cancer survivors of various ethnicities, he said.
In the meantime, physical activity is good for cognitive health,
Ferguson said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1SV6I5m Cancer, online May 2, 2016.
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
