Intelligence and achievement testing in childhood cancer: three years postdiagnosis

Intellectual and educational testing, employing primarily the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) and the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT), was administered to two groups of children, one with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the other with a solid tumor (ST) which did not invade or involve the central nervous system (CNS). Initial testing was completed within 30 days following diagnosis and repeated one year and three years later. Separate ANOVA procedures on the ALL and ST patients were completed, with followup ANOVA procedures for two age groups. The ALL patients declined significantly on WISC-R vocabulary (p less than 0.05) and Full Scale IQ (p less than 0.05), but no significant changes were obtained from the ST patients. Separation of the ALL group into two age groups, less than 8 years and greater than or equal to 8 years revealed significant declines in the younger group on Verbal IQ, Performance IQ, Full Scale IQ, and WRAT arithmetic. However, no significant declines were observed in the older ALL group. The results suggest that declines in ability and achievement are limited to those ALL patients treated with CNS prophylaxis at relatively young ages.