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

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.