Ebook: Chemo Fog: Cancer Chemotherapy-Related Cognitive Impairment

Cancer patients have benefitted greatly from recent advances in the drugs, dose regimens, and combinations used to treat their primary tumor and for the treatment or prevention of spread of their disease. Due to the advances in chemotherapy and other aspects of prevention, early detection, and treatment modalities, an increasing percentage of patients are surviving the disease. For some types of cancer, the majority of patients live decades beyond their diagnosis. For this they are forever thankful and appreciative of the drugs that helped lead to this increased survival rate. But no drug is devoid of adverse effects. This also applies to chemotherapeutic agents. The acute cytotoxic effects of these agents are well known––indeed are often required for their therapeutic benefit. The chronic adverse effects are varied and in some cases less well known. With the increase in survival rates, there has emerged a new awareness of these chronic adverse effects.

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The editors of this book are professors who are engaged in research on areas that compromise the total healing of body and mind in this patient population. One particular component of the need for survivor care is the memory problems and cognitive deficits experienced by some. The condition has been given a name––actually many names, such as chemo fog, chemo brain, and others. These names reflect the belief that the cause of the problem is the chemotherapy that they received as part of their treatment. In some cases the chemo fog/’chemo brain’ is transient while in others it is of longer duration. Little is known about this problem and that fact peaked our interest and motivated this book. Therefore this book is devoted to one aspect of survivor care: chemo fog/’chemo brain’.