Chemotherapy and Post-traumatic Stress in the Causation of Cognitive Dysfunction in Breast Cancer Patients.

Background: Cancer-related cognitive dysfunction has mostly been attributed to chemotherapy; this explanation, however, fails to account for cognitive dysfunction observed in chemotherapy-naïve patients. In a controlled, longitudinal, multisite study, we tested the hypothesis that cognitive function in breast cancer patients is affected by cancer-related post-traumatic stress.

Methods: Newly diagnosed breast cancer patients and healthy control subjects, age 65 or younger, underwent three assessments within one year, including paper-and-pencil and computerized neuropsychological tests, clinical diagnostics of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and self-reported cognitive function.

Clinically assessed posttraumatic stress in patients with breast cancer during the first year after diagnosis in the prospective, longitudinal, controlled COGNICARES study.

Objective: There is ongoing debate whether cancer qualifies as traumatic stressor. We investigated prevalence and course of posttraumatic stress in patients with early breast cancer (BC) during their first year after diagnosis and determined effects of mastectomy and chemotherapy.

Methods: Patients with stage 0-III BC aged ≤65 years were evaluated with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV modules for acute and posttraumatic stress disorder (ASD and PTSD, respectively) before treatment, after chemotherapy, and 1 year after diagnosis.

Elucidating pretreatment cognitive impairment in breast cancer patients: the impact of cancer-related post-traumatic stress.

Background: Pretreatment cognitive impairment in cancer patients is well established but unexplained. Similar cognitive compromise has been observed in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients, and PTSD symptoms are a frequent concomitant of cancer diagnosis. We tested the hypothesis that pretreatment cognitive impairment is attributable to cancer-related post-traumatic stress.