The Fog That Follows Chemotherapy [
The New York Times;
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As more people with cancer survive and try to return to their former lives, a side effect of chemotherapy is getting more and more attention. Its name is apt, if unappealing: chemo brain.
Nearly every chemotherapy patient experiences short-term problems with memory and concentration. But about 15 percent suffer prolonged effects of what is known medically as chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment.
The symptoms are remarkably consistent: a mental fogginess that may include problems with memory, word retrieval, concentration, processing numbers, following instructions, multitasking and setting priorities.
In those affected — and doctors at this point have no way of predicting who might be — it is as if the cognitive portion of the brain were barely functioning. Symptoms are most apparent to high-functioning individuals used to juggling the demands of complex jobs or demanding home lives, or both.
The chemo brain phenomenon was described two years ago in The New York Times by Jane Gross, who noted that after years of medical denial, "there is now widespread acknowledgment that patients with cognitive symptoms are not imagining things."
Some therapists have attributed the symptoms of chemo brain to anxiety, depression, stress, fatigue and fear rather than direct effects of chemotherapy on the brain and hormone balance. Yet when such factors dissipate, the symptoms may not. Recent studies that took other influences into account and analyzed how patients' brains worked before and after cancer treatment have shown that cognitive effects of chemotherapy are real and, for some, long-lasting.
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