[Psychometric evaluation of a neuropsychological test battery measuring cognitive dysfunction in cancer...

Cognitive dysfunctions in cancer patients as a consequence of various oncologic treatments (e. g. chemotherapy) have been increasingly described within the current literature. As most of the neuropsychological tests used within those studies have been developed and validated in neurologic or psychiatric patient populations, it remained unclear whether the application of such measures would be appropriate in cancer patients as well. The present study focused on the psychometric evaluation of a neuropsychological test battery that had been used in two empirical studies carried out at the Department of Medical Psychology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. In addition, recommendations for a basic screening tool were developed. Both study samples were analyzed separately. One sample included breast cancer patients an average of five years following treatment; the second sample included patients with hematological malignancies which had been tested before and 100 days after stem cell transplantation. A further data set of a mixed cancer population (breast cancer patients and patients with hematological malignancies) and corresponding neuropsychological measures could be used for the replication of our results. Those patients had been investigated during an intervention study while receiving rehabilitation at the Clinic for Tumor Biology in Freiburg. Results show that primarily measures for attention were found to have satisfying to high reliability and contribute independently to the explanation of variance of neuropsychological dysfunctions after cancer treatment. In particular, the subtest "Alertness" of the Test Battery for Attentional Performance (TAP) can be recommended as a basic screening for the assessment of cognitive dysfunctions in breast cancer patients and patients with hematological malignancies.