LETTER


Cognitive Examination In Thalassemia Patients



Uni Gamayani1, *, Chandra Calista1, Anam Ong1, Pandji Irani Fianza2, Ramdan Panigoro3
1 Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Padjadjaran/Hasan Sadikin General Hospital, Jalan Pasteur no 38, Bandung, Indonesia
2 Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Padjadjaran/Hasan Sadikin General Hospital, Jalan Pasteur no 38, Bandung, Indonesia
3 Department of Biomedical Science, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Padjadjaran/ Hasan Sadikin General Hospital, RSP Unpad, Jalan Eijkman No 38, Bandung, Indonesia


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Creative Commons License
© 2020 Gamayani et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Padjadjaran/ Hasan Sadikin General Hospital, Jalan Pasteur no 38, Bandung, Indonesia, E-mail: gamayani@yahoo.com


Abstract

Background:

Many studies on thalassemia patients have shown cognitive decline that may affect the patients’ life. To clarify the cognitive value in thalassemia patients, we performed a neuropsychological test on these patients.

Methods:

This was a prospective observational analytic with case control study involving 40 thalassemia patients and 40 controls similar for age, sex, and education. All subjects underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological test including visual cognitive assessment.

Results:

Compared to controls, patients with thalassemia aged 15-47 years old had poorer results in world list recall (p=0.026), TMT-B (p=0.042), clock drawing test (p=0.049), ADAS-Cog (p=0.014), logical memory (p=0.001) and digit symbol (p<0.001). These results indicate that thalassemia patients have significantly lower attention, verbal memory capability, and executive function.

Conclusion:

Our findings concluded that patients with thalassemia have impaired multiple cognitive domains.

Keywords: Cognitive decline, Neuropsychological test, Thalassemia, Hemoglobin, Multiple cognitive domains, Attention.