Dr. Kim Edelstein is heading up a study funded by a Quality of Life Research Grant from the Canadian Cancer Society. The study will look at the impact of cancer on young adults. (Photo: UHN Photographics)
When it comes to cancer research, young adults are often overlooked. Dr. Kim Edelstein, neuropsychologist and researcher at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, is hoping to change that by examining how cancer and cancer treatment affect their thinking abilities.
Dr. Edelstein, a researcher at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, is heading up a study funded by a Quality of Life Research Grant from the Canadian Cancer Society. The project looks at whether young, newly diagnosed cancer patients are negatively impacted or not — in terms of attention span, ability to multi-task, organizational skills and memory — as a result of either treatment or the disease itself.
"What the research has shown is that these effects seem to affect 25 to 30 per cent of patients, so not everyone experiences them," says Dr. Edelstein. "But there is a subset of people for whom symptoms persist many years after treatment."
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