Considering Cognition: Cancer-related Cognitive Dysfunction

During this Glass Half Full podcast Jess and Natalie talked about Cancer-related Cognitive Dysfunction and the role that Occupational Therapists have in treating patients with that diagnosis.  They interviewed a woman named Rachel who has a broader scope of knowledge on this topic to get a better understanding to share with listeners.  The title of this podcast stuck out to me because I have not really thought about working with patients with cancer but I think that is something I would be interested in so I decided to go ahead and listen.  I learned that cancer-related Cognitive Dysfunction is different from “chemo brain” although it used to be thought of as the same.  It is not the same because many people who have not undergone chemo can still have these cognitive deficits.  These deficits can be caused by other treatments, the type of cancer, or secondary conditions in the clients life.  These deficit symptoms can be things such as deficits in short term memory, difficulty multitasking, and slowed processing feed.

These three women explained how Cancer-related Cognitive Dysfunction can often go undiagnosed and overlooked while medical treatments are occurring. The biggest thing from this podcast that stuck out to me in relating to occupational therapy was the psychosocial aspect.  The largest group diagnosed with this cognitive dysfunction are women with breast cancer.  The psychosocial aspects that have been studied have revealed that many women start to have trouble with upholding friendships, develop depression, and have difficulties with visual processing.  This is where occupational therapists come in.  Occupational therapists use two main assessments to help diagnose this: the FACT-Cog and the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure.  Therapists use these assessments to diagnose a client and then come up with an approach and an intervention for each individual.  Rachel suggested that the best approach she has found has been a compensatory approach but there is still not firm research on the strongest approach to take.

This podcast put an idea in my mind that maybe when I get to my psychosocial fieldwork I could do it with a population who has Cancer-related Cognitive Dysfunction.  I have never thought that I would be interested in research but honestly after reflecting on this podcast I would be very interested in researching groups of people who are diagnosed with different types of cancer other than breast cancer.  I want to see how different types of cancer and treatments affect a person’s cognitive function.  I would also be interested in looking more into the approaches and finding the most appropriate one for these types of treatment.  This podcast was very eye-opening and gave me another population to consider working with in the future.