10116- NQPC-6 USEFULNESS OF THE NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL QUICK ASSESSMENT IN THE EVALUATION OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL COMPLICATIONS IN PATIENTS WITH PEDIATRIC BRAIN TUMORS

Abstract BACKGROUND Neuropsychological complications impair the qualitative prognosis of patients with pediatric brain tumors. However, multifaceted evaluation cannot be conducted for all patients owing to various issues, such as time constraints or burden on patients. The Neuropsychological Quick Assessment (NQA) was devised by the Japan Children’s Cancer Group as a screening assessment tool for neuropsychological complications, but without reliability and validity. In this study, we examined the usefulness of NQA in the assessment of neuropsychological complications in patients with pediatric brain tumors. METHODS Patients with pediatric brain tumors treated at Kyoto University Hospital were enrolled. The NQA and functional outcomes (neurocognitive outcome; WISC-IV/WAIS-IV, motor coordination outcome; BOT-2, fatigue; CFS, social behavior outcome; CBCL/ABCL) were assessed (approved by the Kyoto University Graduate School and Faculty of Medicine, Ethics Committee; R1580). We categorized the NQA into five subscales according to the content of the assessments: Neurocognitive, Directional Attention, Coordination, Fatigue, and Social Behavior. The correlations between each subscale score (except Directional Attention) of the NQA and functional outcomes were calculated using Spearman rank correlations. RESULTS This study included 17 patients with pediatric brain tumors with a median age of 14.0 years. The FSIQ (WISC-IV/WAIS-IV) and the Total Motor Composite (BOT-2) strongly negatively correlated with the Neurocognitive score and the Coordination score (ρ=-0.7851, -0.7746; p=0.0002, 0.0007, respectively). Moreover, the score of CFS and the Total T-score (CBCL/ABCL) positively correlated with the Fatigue score and the Social Behavior score (ρ=0.5127, 0.5488; p=0.0353, 0.0225, respectively). CONCLUSIONS Each subscale score of the NQA showed a strong correlation with each functional outcome. Therefore, we believe that the NQA is a simple and clinically useful method for assessing neuropsychological complications in patients with pediatric brain tumors. One limitation of this study is its small sample size; therefore, further investigation is required.