Background: To date, few data are available on the cognitive function of patients with vestibular schwannoma (VS) before treatment.
Objective: To provide a cognitive profile of patients with VS.
Methods: This cross-sectional observational study recruited 75 patients with an untreated VS and 60 age-, sex-, and education-matched healthy control subjects. A set of neuropsychological tests were administered to each participant.
Results: Compared with the matched controls, patients with VS exhibited impaired general cognitive function, memory, psychomotor speed, visuospatial ability, attention and processing speed, and executive function. The subgroup analyses displayed that patients with severe-to-profound unilateral hearing loss were more cognitively impaired than patients with no-to-moderate unilateral hearing loss. In addition, patients with right-sided VS scored worse than those with left-sided VS on tests of memory, attention and processing speed, and executive function. No differences were observed in cognitive performance between patients with or without brainstem compression and those with or without tinnitus. We also found that worse hearing and longer hearing loss duration were associated with poorer cognitive performance in patients with VS.
Conclusion: The findings of this study provide evidence for cognitive impairment in patients with untreated VS. It can thus be said that including cognitive assessment in the routine clinical management of patients with VS may facilitate more appropriate clinical decision-making and improve patients' quality of life.
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