QOL-49. ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT PREDICTION AND OUTCOMES IN CHILDREN WITH BRAIN TUMORS

The purpose of our study is to identify patterns of academic achievement in children before diagnosis of a brain tumor and to examine longitudinal trends of academic achievement after the treatment, by utilizing two state-wide databases: The Iowa Testing Program (ITP) and Iowa Cancer Registry (ICR). The ITP uses a set of standardized academic achievement measures designed for students from kindergarten through high school, while the ICR has records of patients with a brain tumor diagnosis since 1973. A deterministic linkage of the ICR and ITP databases was performed to identify target samples. We identified 593 children with brain tumors who performed academic assessment between 2000-2016. Median age at diagnosis was 9 years old (ranges 0-20). Of the 593 children, 37% had malignant tumors (N=219), and 62% had benign tumors (N=370). Achievement data, in the form of percentile rank scores by grade and content domains (e.g., reading, mathematics) were analyzed. We found no significant difference in academic achievement levels between patients with benign versus malignant tumors at the year prior to diagnosis. Additionally, we found no statistically significant trajectory of academic achievement prior to diagnosis for tumor type, looking specifically at medulloblastoma for our malignant exemplar and low-grade glioma for our benign exemplar. We also found a statistically significant difference in academic achievement trajectory after treatment for those patients who received radiation, rather than chemotherapy, surgery, or combination treatment.