Children With Eye Cancer Suffer Fewer Cognitive Eye Problems As Adults

Children who've survived childhood eye cancer have little risk of developing cognitive or social problems, according to recent findings published in the journal CANCER.

Lead study author Tara Brinkman, PhD, of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis and colleagues studied 69 adult survivors who were an average of 33 years old and had been treated for eye cancer 31 years before.

All participants were required to undergo cognitive tests and fill out questionnaires. Findigns revealed that the survivors did not score lower on most of the cognitive and social evaluations.

However, those treated with whole brain radiation scored slower on short-term verbal memory and long-term verbal memory tests. The study also revealed that those diagnosed within the first year of life scored significantly higher on short-term verbal memory, long-term verbal memory, verbal learning and verbal reasoning tests compared to those diagnosed after at a later age.

"This may be because the area of the brain responsible for processing visual information becomes more adept at processing verbal information following reduced visual input early in life. This suggests the potential of the brain to adapt and reorganize following very early insult," Brinkman said, in a news release.
"To our knowledge, this is the first study to report on long-term cognitive and social outcomes in adult survivors of retinoblastoma. Importantly, we found that, as a whole, these survivors are doing quite well," he concluded.