Evaluation of Working Memory and Brain Fog in Patients with Breast Cancer

Cancer as a chronic physical disease is one of the serious problems of the healthcare system in Iran and the world. People who are involved with this patient, besides physical problems and mental health problems, also experience cognitive problems such as brain fog, mental fatigue and working memory problem. Because most of these cases occur as a result of chemotherapy. Forgetfulness is one of the symptoms of brain fog. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of evaluation of working memory and brain fog in patients with breast cancer. The method of this research was causal-comparative. Participants were evaluated with diagnostic interview and demographic information questionnaire. The statistical population included all women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy and all non-cancer people in Rafsanjan in ۲۰۲۳. The sample of the present study was ۳۸ patients with breast cancer and ۳۸ subjects without cancer, who were selected by available sampling method. After that, participants were evaluated with tools of multidimensional fatigue scale, brain fog measurement scale and Wechsler working memory test. In order to analyze the data and test the research hypotheses, multivariate covariance analysis was used with the help of Spss-۲۶ software. Based on the results, patients with breast cancer had working memory problems and symptoms of brain fog. There were a significant difference between the scores of the two groups of patients and healthy people (P<۰.۰۰۱). With a detailed investigation, it was found that patients with breast cancer who had chemotherapy, due to forgetfulness, their brain fog has affected them more than the healthy group. The results of the research showed that patients with breast cancer experienced a lot of forgetfulness and lack of focus due to drugs and chemotherapy and this forgetfulness, slow thinking and mental fatigue have caused brain fog in these patients.

Keywords:

Working Memory , Brain Fog , Patients with Breast Cancer