Een sensitieve snelle benoemtest voor woordvindproblemen bij patiënten met een laaggradig glioom

Abstract

Low grade glioma patients report word finding difficulties during the anamnesis. However, these are often not objectified with naming tests used in clinical practice. The aim of the current study was to develop a sensitive speeded naming test for word finding difficulties in low grade glioma patients.
Reaction times on a picture naming test were obtained for 18 glioma patients and 20 healthy participants. Results of a measure of cognitive speed (Trail Making Test-A) were taken into account to exclude the possibility of slower response rates in glioma patients due to overall cognitive slowing. Naming test results were compared with results of a naming test commonly used in clinical practice, the BostonNaming Test (BNT), in order to evaluate the additional value of the speeded naming test. Also, the effect of word
frequency and age of acquisition (AoA) on naming latencies was investigated.
Glioma patients were significantly slower than the healthy participants in object naming. The slower naming latencies were not explained by an overall lower speed of processing. BNT scores could not explain the slower naming latencies. A qualitative comparison between results of the speeded naming test and BNT pointed to a higher sensitivity of the naming test for word finding difficulties. Although an effect of word frequency and AoA emerged in the healthy participant group, there was no effect on the naming latencies in the patient group for these variables.
The results showed a clear difference between naming latencies of low grade glioma patients and healthy controls, while patients rarely achieved clinical scores on the BNT. There is support for the use of a speeded naming test in daily clinical practice in which reaction times are included as a critical component for diagnosing word finding difficulties in glioma patients.