Impact of breast cancer on prospective memory functioning assessed by virtual reality and influence of sleep quality and hormonal therapy: PROSOM-K study

Abstract

BackgroundBreast cancer (BC) is the most frequent cancer in women with more than 70% of BC patients being treated with hormonal therapy (HT). Among these patients, some report difficulties in remembering what they are supposed to do at the right moment, referring to prospective memory (PM). PM is essential for autonomy and medical adherence of patients, and requires an ecological assessment. Virtual reality, that recreates naturalistic environment, seems to be a promising method to evaluate PM. Several BC patients also report sleep disturbances. Given the role of sleep on memory consolidation, it is imperative to explore the influence of sleep quality on PM in BC patients treated with HT.The purpose of PROSOM-K study is to assess PM functioning using virtual reality and sleep quality in BC treated or not with HT.MethodsPROSOM-K is a prospective study including post-menopausal BC patients ≤70 years old treated with radiotherapy (n = 25) or with radiotherapy and HT (n = 25), and healthy post-menopausal women (n = 25) matched for age and education. PM will be assessed using a virtual reality based task. Other cognitive functions and psychosocial factors will be assessed with validated questionnaires and neuropsychological tests. The study is divided in 3 sessions: a session of familiarisation with the virtual environment and the PM task: a day-time session during which participants learn intentions during the morning and recall them in the evening; and a night-time session during which participants learn intentions in the evening and recall them the following morning. Women will be monitored by wrist actigraphy; during the night-time session, objective sleep quality and quantity will be measured by polysomnography.DiscussionThis is a novel study aiming to assess PM using virtual reality, coupled with the evaluation of other cognitive functions. Polysomnographic study of sleep will provide further information about architectural sleep disturbances in BC. Association between sleep architecture parameters and PM mechanism in BC women treated with HT will be described in detail. We expect our results will provide knowledge for patients and clinicians and further help to improve patient care and cognitive therapy.Trial registrationNCT03420105, registered: January 10, 2018.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12885-018-4762-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Virtual Reality for Pain Management in Cancer: A Comprehensive Review

“…However, the type of cancer in each study differs considerably, as shown in Table II. Approximately, 23% of the papers were focused on breast cancer treatments [22], [23], [26], [27], [28], [31], [35], [37], [39], [41] followed by blood cancer (e.g., leukaemia, lymphoblastic, etc.) (12%) [21], [25], [33], [36], [38], bone cancer (12%) [25], [29], [33], [38], [40], and brain cancer (12%) [25], [32], [33], [38], [40].…”

“…Finally, 12% of papers did not report the type of pain [20], [23], [32]. Some of the reviewed studies were not related directly to pain (35%), meaning that they, examined closely side effects such as fatigue, anxiety, depression, emotional distress, neurocognitive problems, prospective memory issues, and other issues that cancer patients are usually dealing with because of the procedural pain caused by the medical processes, [22], [28], [30], [33], [34], [35], [38], [40], [42].…”

“…Regarding the effectiveness of VR on pain management and cancer, most of the studies outcomes were positive (83%) [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [32] , [30], [31], [33], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42] and less than quarter neutral (17%) [28], [29], [34], [35], while negative results were not reported. To illustrate this, it was found that the use of VR can reduce pain [21], [24], [25], [26], [27], [29], [37], [39], [40] improve emotional wellbeing [21], [23], [24], [29], [32], [33], [34], [35], [38], [39], [40], [42] enhance the rehabilitation training [20], [26], [27], [3...…”

“…People who are suffering from cancer undergo through painful medical processes including medical examinations, surgeries, biopsies, chemotherapies, and others. VR has been used to treat the procedural pain cancer patients are dealing with, reporting positive results [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42]. This study presents a review of research, for the last 10 years (2010- 19) and examines the use of VR technology for cancer patients who undergo painful medical processes.…”

Catechol-O-Methyltransferase Gene Polymorphisms and the Risk of Chemotherapy-Induced Prospective Memory Impairment in Breast Cancer Patients with Varying Tumor Hormonal Receptor Expression

“…One cognitive deficit is prospective memory (PM), which is the capability of memorizing things to be done at a certain time or place [ 9 ]. Prospective memory based on time (TBPM) and prospective memory based on event (EBPM) are distinguishable aspects of PM.…”