At a press conference during the 2013 ASH Annual Meeting, Dr Smita Bhatia presents the results of prospective longitudinal study.

While a hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) is often a lifesaving procedure, previous reports have associated transplant-related chemotherapy and radiation as having a negative impact on cognitive function. Seeking to explore whether transplants – and specifically the intensity of transplant-related chemotherapy and radiation – might be associated with cognitive decline, investigators conducted a prospective study, measuring cognitive function in transplant patients and healthy controls at similar intervals.