NCO-01NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILES IN INDIVIDUALS WITH INCIDENTAL MENINGIOMA

Abstract

Meningioma is a primary brain tumor that is thought to be most often asymptomatic. To our knowledge, no study has attempted to describe neurocognitive function in patients with incidental meningiomas. We hypothesized that relative to controls, individuals with incidental meningioma will have subtle neurocognitive deficits affecting efficiency and attention. To investigate this hypothesis, we utilized the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging (MCSA), which is a population-based sample of Olmsted County, Minnesota residents used to study prevalence, incidence, and risk-factors for Mild Cognitive Impairment and dementia and includes neuropsychological testing and brain MRI every 15 months. Using a text search of radiologist's notes of 2,402 MCSA individuals, mean age 77 ± 8 years and scanned between 2004-2014, we identified 52 subjects (2%) who had at least one meningioma. Most meningiomas were small (94% < 3cm). Each of the 52 subjects was matched to five non-demented MCSA controls (n = 260) on age, sex, and education. Cognitive domains assessed included memory, attention-executive function, language, and visuospatial. Groups did not differ on prevalence of Mild Cognitive Impairment (Meningioma = 13%, Controls = 12%). Across cognitive domains, very similar performance was observed for the two groups (p's ≥ 0.30). Subtle differences in memory performance (0.3 z-scores units; 95% CI - 0.6 to 0.0; p = 0.10) emerged for the evaluation that occurred when the meningioma was at its largest measurement during the study, and may be related to location. Our findings suggest that small meningiomas are clinically benign, but that may change as the tumor evolves, and might be impacted by other factors, such as meningioma location.