Chemo brain vs. Alzheimer’s disease?

Question from TWave: How can you identify the difference between chemo brain and Alzheimer's disease?
Answers - Christina Meyers That's easy! It's totally different. If a person has Alzheimer's disease, they have rapid forgetting of information. Earlier I referred to learning a list of 12 words. People with chemo brain and Alzheimer's may remember the same number of words, but later the person with Alzheimer's will remember 0 and the person with chemo brain will remember all of them. So a person with chemo brain has problems with memory retrieval. If someone is worried about having Alzheimer's disease, they don't have it! People with Alzheimer's aren't aware.
George Sledge, M.D. Personally, I find that very reassuring!
Christina Meyers With chemo brain, nothing is lost from memory, it's just not retrieved efficiently. We all have that tip-of-the-tongue thing — trying to remember something like the name of an actor in a movie. For people with chemo brain, the information will come back to them later — they don't forget it. That's the difference.



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