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Language impairment among patients with different types of cancer. Comparison with healthy adults

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Abstract

Purpose

Language dysfunction is a crucial deficit in terms of cognitive functioning, quality of life and activities of daily living. Several studies have identified cognitive impairment in patients with cancer across several cognitive domains, including language.

Methods

We investigated language functions among 182 patients with different types of cancer (not brain cancer) and compared them with the performance of Greek healthy adults with the same age and educational levels as the patients. The assessment included verbal fluency test, both semantic (animals) and phonological (X), and Boston Naming Test (BNT-60) among other neuropsychological measures.

Results

Breast cancer patients performed worse compared to patients with prostate, colorectal and thyroid cancer in language tasks. In addition, breast cancer patients had a decreased performance compared with healthy adults, while patients with other types performed to the mean in two out of three language tasks.

Conclusions

Semantic and phonological fluency requirements of cognitive processes in the brain are discussed.

Implications for cancer survivors

Language dysfunction is a crucial deficit in terms of cognitive functioning, quality of life and activities of daily living, especially in brain cancer patients, but it can be crucial for patients with other types of cancer as stated in the present study.

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Notes

  1. ET—endocrine therapy which includes tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors.

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Acknowledgements

The author declares that she has not received financial support for the present study. I would like to thank all patients for taking part in the present study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Kalliopi Megari

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  1. Kalliopi Megari
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Correspondence to Kalliopi Megari.

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Conflict of interest

The author declares that she has no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Ethical statement

Participants were treated in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki pertaining to research with human subjects. The study received no financial support and none of the authors has any conflicts of interest to report.

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Megari, K. Language impairment among patients with different types of cancer. Comparison with healthy adults. Breast Cancer Res Treat 184, 779–782 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-020-05898-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-020-05898-7

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