However, it is established that this phenomenon is multifactorial and factors like the chemotherapy regimen, patients’ age, ethnicity, socio-economic status, stage of disease, menopausal status, and psychological symptoms are possible predisposing factors. To date, the exact mechanism of chemobrain is not well understood. Li and his colleagues in their review illustrated that attention, processing speed, verbal memory, and executive control are the affected domains. reported impairment in memory, language, and processing speed. indicated that chemotherapy causes mild deficit only in verbal and visuospatial domains. Studies have revealed that chemobrain acts on different cognitive domains including visuospatial skill, attention, delayed memory, processing speed, executive functions, and concentration with various severity. Another possible explanation is that chemotherapy causes mild cognitive impairment which is not detected by neuropsychological tests but affects the patients’ daily life. suggested that these discrepancies could be explained by variation in cognitive assessments and definition of impairment or the hypothesis that ‘subjective cognitive impairment may be an indicator of psychological distress rather than chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment’. While self-reported cognitive dysfunction prevalence is up to 70%, there is no association between perceived and objective cognitive impairment in cancer survivors, and even some studies showed there is no objectively detected cognitive decline. The prevalence of chemobrain has been reported differently in some articles. This chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment is experienced by many BC patients after treatment and is known as “chemofog” or “chemobrain” in literature. Although BC survivors reported lower QoL than the general population immediately after diagnosis and treatment, their QoL improved over time and even some researches showed they have the same QoL as normal age-matched controls but they still suffer from symptoms such as cognitive problems, fatigue, insomnia, sexual issues, etc.Īs mentioned above, the cognitive deficit in BC survivors may be presented for many years and affect their QoL. With the increasing number of disease-free survivors, the concept of Quality of life (QoL) of BC survivors becomes important. In recent years, with the early detection of the patients and the development of treatment methods, the number of survivors of this disease has increased in many countries. Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer and the leading cause of cancer deaths among women.
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