Evaluation of the Impact of Cognitive Training on Quality of Life in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation in a group of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients.

Methods: Thirty-four patients were included in this study and randomly allocated either to treatment with multidisciplinary rehabilitation plus cognitive training or to treatment with multidisciplinary rehabilitation alone.

Results: After 3 months of cognitive treatment, the patients assigned to the rehabilitation plus cognitive training group displayed an improvement in the cognitive test of executive function and a marked improvement in quality of life (QoL). The patients treated with multidisciplinary rehabilitation without cognitive training improved in the physical composite score alone. Both groups of patients displayed an improvement in depression, though the improvement was confirmed at the 6-month follow-up examination (p = 0.036) only in patients treated with multidisciplinary rehabilitation plus cognitive training.

Conclusions: Our results indicate that the multidisciplinary rehabilitation treatment is the best approach to treat MS. The specific effect of each treatment needs to be assessed to be able to determine its role within a multidisciplinary approach. Cognitive rehabilitation is an important aspect of this multidisciplinary approach insofar as it may improve the QoL of MS people.

Keywords: Cognitive treatment; Multidisciplinary rehabilitation; Multiple sclerosis; Outcome measures; Quality of life.