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Psychosocial
and behavioral functioning among pediatric brain tumor survivors
Carpentieri SC, Meyer EA, Delaney BL, Victoria ML, Gannon BK, Doyle JM,
Kieran MW
Division of Psychology, Children's Hospital, Boston, MA,
USA;
sarah.carpentieri@carpenburymed.com
Objective. To describe the psychosocial and behavioral functioning, as
described by patient, parent and teacher, of a cohort of adolescents who have
been previously treated for a brain tumor.
Methods.
A cohort of 32 patients, 12-18 years old, were evaluated between 1 and 5 years
post-treatment for brain tumor during the patient's regularly scheduled
follow-up clinic appointment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The Self-Report questionnaire and the Parent-Report of the Behavioral Assessment
System for Children (BASC) were administered to the patient and to one of the
patient's parents, respectively.
In addition, the BASC Teacher-Report was completed by the patient's
teacher.
Descriptive statistics were generated; binomial distribution analyses were
carried out to assess whether the proportion of individuals with impaired
performance on each measure exceeded normative expectations.
Results.
Comparison of the proportion of patients with elevated scores to normative
expectations indicated no excess of elevated scores on any of the BASC scales of
the Self-Report.
However, parents endorsed items in the areas of attention problems and
leadership; teachers endorsed items concerning learning problems; and both
parents and teachers endorsed items indicative of somatization behaviors.
Conclusions.
Parent and teacher feedback indicate some level of psychosocial and behavioral
morbidity for adolescents treated for a brain tumor; this finding contrasts with
adolescent Self-Report indicating no difficulties in behavioral and psychosocial
functioning.
The extent to which these vulnerabilities impact quality of life and the
discrepancy between reporters should be assessed in follow-up studies with a
larger cohort of patients.
PMID: 12892234 [PubMed - in process]
Source:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12892234&dopt=Abstract
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