Home-based cognitive rehabilitation in brain tumor patients: Feasibility of the evidence-based ReMind program

Objective: Many patients with primary brain tumors suffer from cognitive deficits. Treatment options for these deficits are scarce, time-consuming and costly. Recent studies showed promising results on the efficacy of cognitive rehabilitation in these patients. Also, the cognitive rehabilitation program (CRP) developed by our group proved effective in an RCT. To increase its accessibility, it was converted into the app-based CRP ReMind. We performed a pilot study to evaluate feasibility and patient experience of this new method of training. Participants and Methods: Prior to surgery, 15 patients with a presumed meningioma or low-grade glioma were included in this study. The CRP ReMind incorporated both retraining of attention and practicing of compensational strategies of attention, memory and executive functioning. Patients started 3 months after neurosurgery and spent several hours per week on the program for 10 weeks. Neuropsychological assessments were conducted one day before surgery, 3 months after surgery (i.e. before starting the program) and 6 months after surgery (i.e. immediately after finishing the program). At all time-points, questionnaires on psychosocial and subjective cognitive functioning were administered to patients and caregivers. Results: Feasibility (i.e. percentages of interested, adhered and dropped-out patients) and patient experience will be presented. Also, results of paired t-tests will be presented for a first impression of possible changes in cognitive functioning and patient-reported outcomes (PROs). Conclusions: This is the first study that provides evidence-based cognitive rehabilitation via a tablet-app in brain tumor patients. An RCT on the effects of ReMind on cognitive functioning and PROs is forth-coming