Abstract
Objective
To investigate whether treatment of cancer with chemotherapy, as compared with surgery
and radiation, differentially affects cognitive functioning in older adults.
Design
Latent class growth analysis approach.
Setting
Health and Retirement Study.
Participants
Older adults (N=403) with a new diagnosis of cancer who were still alive 4 years after
their diagnosis.
Interventions
Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measures
Cognition (degree of immediate recall and delayed recall of a word list).
Results
Findings indicated that 3 classes of cognitive functioning best fit the data, specifically
high, middle, and low recall classes. Individuals treated with chemotherapy were significantly
more likely to be in the high recall class, with no effect of receiving surgery or
radiation. When interactions with demographic predictors were entered into the model,
an Age × Treatment interaction was present such that individuals younger than 80 years
were more likely to both receive chemotherapy and have high recall cognition.
Conclusions
Three distinct classes of cognitive functioning emerged in older adults with cancer.
Treatment with chemotherapy predicted likely membership in the high recall class in
this sample of cancer survivors; however, this was due to an Age × Treatment interaction.
Implications for understanding cognitive sequelae of cancer in late life are discussed.
Keywords
List of abbreviations:
BIC (Bayesian information criterion), HRS (Health and Retirement Study), LCGA (latent class growth analysis)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 20, 2017
Footnotes
Disclosures: none.
Identification
Copyright
Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine
