Pretreatment neurocognitive function and self-reported symptoms in patients with newly diagnosed head and neck cancer compared with noncancer cohort.

Pretreatment patients with head and neck cancer reported cognitive disturbance. The frequency of impaired performance, albeit high, was consistent with the literature demonstrating false-positive "abnormal" neuropsychological test performance is not uncommon. Inclusion of a noncancer patient control cohort is essential because using solely normative data as a comparison may foster erroneous interpretation.