As if it weren’t bad enough dept.: Chemotherapy may dull mental ability, research finds

“Ordinary doses of chemotherapy can sometimes appear to dull survivors’ intellectual

powers, leaving them with poor memories, muddy thinking and inability to do math in their heads, new research suggests.

Cancer patients often complain of “chemobrain,” or woolly-headedness during treatment. While they are typically reassured this will go away, little

attempt has been made until now to see if these subtle problems linger years later.

The new study, conducted at Dartmouth Medical School, found that people who get standard chemotherapy appear to be about twice as likely as other

cancer patients to score poorly on various intelligence tests an average of 10 years after their treatment.”