Cognitive deficits in adult patients with high-grade glioma: A systematic review

High-grade gliomas cause cognitive impairment in those who suffer from them. However, there is a lack of precise data describing the cognitive deficit that occurs in this population, which would allow to better focus neuropsychological evaluations and make better clinical decisions in favor of the patient's recovery and quality of life. For this purpose, a systematic review of the literature was carried out to search for studies on neurocognitive alterations in patients with malignant brain tumors.

The systematic review was conducted under the criteria of the PRISMA guideline for reporting systematic review and meta-analysis reports, with a search of the PubMed database (MEDLINE). Descriptive and analytical observational studies between 2015 and 2020 were considered.

506 articles were identified, of which 16 met the inclusion criteria and were selected in the qualitative synthesis and described in the manuscript.

High-grade gliomas cause significant alterations in cognitive domains such as language, attention, memory, empathy and executive functions. However, more studies focused on describing the neuropsychological alterations in this population are needed in order to make better clinical treatment and rehabilitation decisions.