Chemotherapy-induced prospective memory impairment in patients with breast cancer.

ObjectiveThis 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. MethodsForty 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. ResultsA 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). ConclusionsOur results suggest that breast cancer patients who had undergone adjuvant chemotherapy show deficits in EBPM but not in TBPM. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.