Effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation on retrospective and prospective memory of women with breast cancer under chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is one of the most basic treatments for cancer patients, which, along with the treatment of the disease, causes many problems for people with the disease. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation on retrospective and prospective memory of women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy. The study population consisted of all women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy who referred to health centers in Tehran. The semi-experimental research design was pretest-posttest with control group. From this population, 30 participants were selected by convenience sampling and were randomly divided into experimental and control groups (15 in each group). Cognitive rehabilitation was performed using the Cognitive Memory and Attention Rehabilitation Program.. Data were collected using a retrospective and prospective memory scale of Crawford et al. Data were analyzed using univariate and multivariate analysis of covariance. The results showed a significant decrease in the retrospective and prospective memory problems in the experimental group compared to the control group. As a result, providing low-cost and useful services such as cognitive rehabilitation can be helpful to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy.