Cognitive dysfunction (chemobrain) in breast cancer patients receiving adjuvant therapy: A meta-analysis.

e19608 Background: Breast cancer is the second cause of mortality in Brazilian women. “Chemobrain” is defined as cognitive changes experienced by patients undergoing chemotherapy, especially in aspects of visual and verbal memory, attention and psychomotor functions. Methods: Review and analysis of articles that address the issue of cognitive dysfunctions related to antineoplastic chemotherapy (chemobrain) in patients with breast cancer published in the Pubmed database in the last 10 years. Results: Nine articles included information that permitted calculation of the relative risk of cognitive dysfunction between cases and controls. The degree of impairment in cognitive function classified as “moderate to high” was present in 145 (28.1%) of patients and in 81 (17.6%) of controls (p=0.0001). In an aggregate of all the studies, the chemotherapy patients had a relative risk estimate to develop moderate to high cognitive dysfunction that was 1.84 times higher than controls (CI 95% 1.46-2.32; p< 0.00001, heter...