NCCN Guidelines® Insights: Survivorship, Version 1.2023.

The NCCN Guidelines for Survivorship are intended to help healthcare professionals address the complex and varied needs of cancer survivors. The NCCN Guidelines provide screening, evaluation, and treatment recommendations for psychosocial and physical problems resulting from adult-onset cancer and its treatment; recommendations to help promote healthy behaviors and immunizations in survivors; and a framework for care coordination. These NCCN Guidelines Insights summarize recent guideline updates and panel discussions pertaining to sleep disorders, fatigue, and cognitive function in cancer survivors.

Suspiciously slow: timed digit span as an embedded performance validity measure in a sample of veterans with mTBI.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the utility of Timed Digit Span (TDS) as an embedded performance validity test (PVT) in a sample of veterans with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). We hypothesize that TDS will predict PVT failure on an established stand-alone measure (Trial 1 of the Test of Memory Malingering; TOMM). METHODS: TDS was compared to Digit Span accuracy (DS), using TOMM as a criterion measure, in a sample of 99 veterans with mTBI. Correlation and regression were used to characterize associations between PVTs. Logistic regression was utilized to examine the relationship between embedded PVTs and the odds of TOMM failure. Classification accuracy of TDS was examined using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Predictive power of TDS to estimate TOMM failure was calculated for the current sample and for hypothetical populations with common base rates (BRs). OUTCOMES: TDS significantly predicted failure on the TOMM and added greater incremental predictive value to the model compared to DS accuracy. Estimates of the predictive power of TDS were calculated using observed and hypothetical BRs. Sensitivity to stand-alone PVT, failure was 38% when specificity was set at 90%. CONCLUSION: TDS offers a promising embedded PVT method, given its strong convergence with an established stand-alone PVT.

The Role of Acetylcholine in Attention in Turtles (Chrysemys picta).

Research on mammals and turtles has suggested that acetylcholine is involved in attention in these groups. Two experiments investigated the ability of painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) to ignore irrelevant stimuli when the basal forebrain acetylcholine system was compromised. In experiment 1, turtles given lesions of the basal magnocellular cholinergic nucleus (NBM) or sham lesions were tested on a go/no go discrimination between horizontal and vertical stripes with or without irrelevant inserts in the box. The irrelevant inserts were blue and white checked walls and green carpet on the floor. The group with lesions of the NBM and no irrelevant inserts had no difficulty learning the task, but the lesioned group with irrelevant inserts was impaired on the discrimination. The sham-lesioned group was not impaired by the presence of irrelevant inserts. In experiment 2, turtles were given either the acetylcholine muscarinic receptor blocker scopolamine or saline and tested on the same task. The turtles given scopolamine had no difficulty learning the task in the absence of irrelevant inserts, but they were severely impaired when irrelevant inserts were present. The irrelevant inserts did not affect the learning of control turtles given saline. These findings provide evidence that acetylcholine enhances turtles' ability to orient to relevant stimuli and suggest that its role in learning and memory may be to allow animals to orient to the stimuli relevant to a task and to ignore irrelevant stimuli.

Population Base Rates and Disease Course of Common Psychiatric and Neurodegenerative Disorders.

Knowledge of population base rates of neurological and psychiatric disorders is fundamental for diagnostic decision making. Consideration of relevant probabilistic information can improve diagnostic efficiency and accuracy. However, such data continue to be misused or underutilized, which can lead to misdiagnoses and negative patient outcomes. The aim of the current review is to create an easily accessible and comprehensive reference of existing age of onset as well as prevalence and incidence data for common neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders in adults. Relevant epidemiological data were compiled from well-respected and frequently-cited textbooks and scholarly studies. Reviews were collected from PubMed, and publicly-available sources were gathered from Google Scholar. Results are organized and presented in several tables and a figure, which can be used as a diagnostic guide for students and clinicians across healthcare disciplines.

Dual-tasking gait variability and cognition in late-life depression.

OBJECTIVES: Studies have demonstrated an association between major depressive disorder (MDD) symptoms and fall risk in older adults, which may be at least partially mediated by executive functioning skills. There have also been observations of increased gait variability associated with fall risk and disease. This preliminary study first sought to understand whether gait variability in the context of dual task cost differs among older adults with MDD, relative to those with no history of psychiatric illness, and second, to identify relationships between gait variability measures and cognitive functioning in the context of MDD. METHODS: We recruited 15 older adults with MDD and 17 non-depressed (ND) community-dwelling older adults. All participants had impaired balance based on unipedal stance time. Assessments included neuropsychological measures and measures of gait variability using an instrumented gait mat (GAITRite© ) in the context of dual task relative to single task performance (i.e., dual task cost). RESULTS: The groups did not differ on any gait variability parameters. The MDD group demonstrated poorer performance in the psychomotor speed domain, relative to the ND group, but cognitive functioning between the groups in other domains was equivalent. In MDD, increased variability in stride time, stride velocity, and swing time during dual-tasking were associated with poorer executive functioning and visual memory. In ND, no significant relationships between gait variables and cognitive performance were observed. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that unique cognitive mechanisms underlie mobility problems associated with fall risk in late-life depression.

Montreal Cognitive Assessment as a screening tool: Influence of performance and symptom validity.

BACKGROUND: We evaluated Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) performance in a veteran traumatic brain injury (TBI) population, considering performance validity test (PVT) and symptom validity test (SVT) data, and explored associations of MoCA performance with neuropsychological test performance and self-reported distress. METHODS: Of 198 consecutively referred veterans to a Veterans Administration TBI/Polytrauma Clinic, 117 were included in the final sample. The MoCA was administered as part of the evaluation. Commonly used measures of neuropsychological functioning and performance and symptom validity were also administered to aid in diagnosis. RESULTS: Successively worse MoCA performances were associated with a greater number of PVT failures (ps < 0.05). Failure of both the SVT and at least 1 PVT yielded the lowest MoCA scores. Self-reported distress (both posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and neurobehavioral cognitive symptoms) was also related to MoCA performance. CONCLUSIONS: Performance on the MoCA is influenced by task engagement and symptom validity. Causal inferences about neurologic and neurocognitive impairment, particularly in the context of mild TBI, wherein the natural course of recovery is well known, should therefore be made cautiously when such inferences are based heavily on MoCA scores. Neuropsychologists are well versed in the assessment of performance and symptom validity and thus may be well suited to explore the influences of abnormal performances on cognitive screening.