[Attention process training application within an intervention project on attentional processes in children with cancer].

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Childhood cancer treatments have made a spectacular advance in recent years, obtaining survival rates of about 70%. These survival rates have permitted many children to reach adulthood, but also involve the appearance of previously unknown neurocognitive sequelae because of high mortality. DEVELOPMENT: Neuropsychological evaluation allows the detection of these deficits and the design of intervention. In children, rather than a loss of function there is a loss of the capacities that should develop in comparison with his/her peers. To obtain a base line to determine the affected and altered areas, it is equally vital to assess the acute and long term effects so as to evaluate the success of the intervention program. Attention Process Training (APT) is an individualized application program of attentional exercises of varying complexity in sustained, selective, alternating and divided attention. This program combines methods and techniques of cerebral damage rehabilitation, as well as educational and clinical psychology. It is completed with a self instruction training which is applied in situations of daily life. CONCLUSIONS: Child cancer treatment continues to carry long term neurocognitive sequelae. Neuropsychological evaluation is basic for its detection, allowing relevant information to be offered to parents and teachers, so as to facilitate design of individualized rehabilitation procedures. Attention training is basic for this type of population with generalized damage related to white matter, and forms part of a wider rehabilitation process that enhance the ecological validity of the program.