Neuropsychological rehabilitation programs in adult patients with brain tumors.

• Main Authors: Ana Sanz Cortés, María Eugenia Olivares Crespo
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad Complutense de Madrid 2014-01-01
• Series: Psicooncologia
• Subjects: tumores cerebrales; pacientes adultos; Rehabilitación Neuropsicológica.
• Online Access: http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/PSIC/article/view/43452

Cognitive deficits are one of the most common symptoms in patients with brain tumors, especially in attention, memory and executive functions. These changes impact negatively on the quality of life of patients and their return to their daily activities. In recent years, they are developing Neuropsychological Rehabilitation programs in adult patients with brain tumors, with positive results.The authors recommend that interventions include psychoeducation techniques, recovery strategies of different attentional and executive processes (planning and organization) and compensatory techniques for memory. The studies published to date show improvement immediately after surgery in attention and memory. However, there are not data exist on the impact of these programs on performance rehabilitation of these patients in the medium and long term (over six months). The future studies need to evaluate the effectiveness of this intervention in elderly patients with brain tumors, and the results differ depending on the type of tumor and cancer treatments applied, as these two features can significantly affect the data obtained.