NCOG-06. USABILITY AND VALIDITY OF A PHONE BATTERY TO ASSESS LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS IN BRAIN TUMOR PATIENTS UNDERGOING AWAKE SURGERY

Abstract

Introduction: A wake surgery in eloquent brain regions is performed to preserve language functions. Although in general no major permanent language deficits are found after awake brain surgery, clinically relevant impairments are detected (Satoer et al., 2014). Unfortunately, follow-up of tumor patients in the San Francisco area is difficult since most patients are not local and come from far. Therefore, we developed a short language phone battery for pre- and postoperative language assessments. Methods: Phase 1: task and item selection of the phone battery. The development of the phone battery was based on the Dutch Linguistic Intraoperative Protocol (De Witte et al., 2015) and existing standardized English batteries. Two parallel versions were composed and tested in healthy native English speakers. The test items were controlled for linguistic variables (e.g. frequency). Phase 2: clinical use of the phone battery in tumor patients. The phone battery was administered in a group of 15 tumor patients before surgery and at 1 week after surgery. Follow-up test moments at 1 month and 3 months postsurgery are planned. These patient data will be compared with language data collected in a group of 15 matched controls. Results: Phase 1: The phone test battery includes auditory comprehension, repetition, semantic selection, sentence/story completion, verbal naming and fluency tests. It takes less than 20 minutes to administer. The healthy participants had no difficulty performing any of the seven language tests via the phone, attesting to the feasibility of a phone assessment. Phase 2: In the tumor group wordfinding, phonological and fluency problems were found at 1 week postsurgery. Longer follow-up data will be analysed and discussed. Discussion: The use of telephone batteries to conduct language assessments from afar can provide convenience, reduce costs (for traveling), and optimize patient care as assessment services might be unavailable locally.