Interactive model of neuropsychological consequences of childhood cancer

Long-term negative consequence of childhood cancer are often neuropsychological deficits. The nature and degree of its depend mainly on the age of the child at the diagnosis and the type of treatment. In the group of high-risk are young children treated with radiation on the CNS and receiving high doses of certain drugs (methotrexate, L-asparaginase, cisplatin). The main neuropsychological consequences in these patients are a delay and disturbances in the speech development, disorders of analysis and synthesis of visual and auditory patterns, decreased memory and attention functions, delay of grafo-motor development, lower IQ, difficulty in establishing interpersonal contact. In addition, there may occur sensory deficits, and epilepsy. The scale of the observed neuropsychological deficits also depends on external factors. Cognitive stimulation, exercise of manual dexterity, visual perception development, training of effective methods of learning, teaching social skills, early used of hearing-aid for hearing loss can greatly reduce the range of neuropsychological dysfunction. Results of these researches suggest effectiveness of cognitive stimulation in population of childhood cancer survivors and by these increase our understanding of the neuropsychological deficits. The observed dependence and feedback between the direct result of the treatment and the impacts of stimulus tends to adopt an interactive model of neuropsychological consequences of childhood cancer.