NCOG-08. SHORT DuLIP: VALUABLE ADDITION TO STANDARD LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT IN GLIOMA PATIENTS BEFORE AND AFTER SURGERY

Abstract

Awake surgery is the gold standard for eloquent area low-grade gliomas (LGG) to preserve cognition and Quality of Life (QoL). LGG patients often report mild language disturbances which cannot always be captured with “classical” language tests (e.g. Boston Naming Test). Therefore a sensitive protocol was designed: Dutch Linguistic Intraoperative Protocol (DuLIP) with production and perception tests at the linguistic levels: phonology, semantics, syntax. DuLIP appeared to be mostly suitable for intraoperative testing with many relatively “easy” items (possible influence of slight sedation). A shortened more complex version was needed for pre- and postoperative testing to detect mild disturbances. We present preliminary results of glioma patients assessed with short DuLIP and “classical” language tests. 21 patients (mean age 41.8) were included and tested pre- (N=21) and postoperatively (N=8) with: Short DuLIP: Production: 1) repetition (3-syllabic-words, compounds, non-words, sentences), 2) semantic-odd-picture-out (nouns, verbs), 3) sentence completion, Perception: 4) sentence judgment (phonology, semantics, syntax) measured with Accuracy (AC) and Reaction Time (RT). “Classical” tests: Boston Naming Test, Token Test, category and letter fluency. Preoperatively, patients' performance was intact on all “classical” tests. Impairments were observed in short DuLIP: semantic-odd-picture-out (verbs), sentence completion, AC and RT of the semantic sentence judgment task and on RT of the phonological sentence judgment task (z≥-1.5). Postoperatively, 1 “classical” test deteriorated: letter fluency whereas Short DuLIP worsened on all 5 repetition subtests, sentence completion and RTs sentence judgement on all 3 subtests (z≥-1.5). AC of the semantic sentence judgment task improved (z