Introduction: As one of the main treatment, chemotherapy is used for cancer treatment; however, it has several side effects, one of which is deficit in executive functions, commonly referred to as 'chemo brain'. The aim of this study was to compare retrospective and prospective memory in women with breast cancer as well as breast cancer survivors with history of chemotherapy to healthy counterparts.

Methods: This study was cross-sectional and causal-comparative. The sample included 40 women diagnosed with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy, 40 women with history of chemotherapy who were survivors of breast cancer, and 40 healthy counterpart individuals with no history of chronic diseases, whose prospective and retrospective memory were assessed by questionnaires. The obtained data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance and SPSS version 22.

Results: Data analysis showed that prospective and retrospective memory function in women with history of chemotherapy and survivors of breast cancer were significantly different (P < 0.05) compared with healthy counterparts. This means that women undergoing treatment for breast cancer and cancer survivors showed weakness in prospective and retrospective memory function compared with their normal counterparts. Also, prospective and retrospective memory function in patients with breast cancer and survivors showed a significant difference (P < 0.05). Bonferroni test result showed that women undergoing chemotherapy showed more weakness in prospective and retrospective memory function in comparison with survivor counterparts.

Conclusions: Memory can be considered as one of the main causes of patients’ adherence to treatment, which affects patients’ satisfaction directly and indirectly. Health professionals can be inspired by the findings in this group of individuals to determine what strategies are useful for improving memory and to examine its effects on patients’ medication adherence.