Acta oncologica
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Clinical Trial
Treatment-related factors predisposing to chronic pain in patients with breast cancer--a multivariate approach.
A study was carried out to assess the factors predisposing to chronic post-treatment pain in the breast area and in the ipsilateral arm in patients treated for breast cancer using two multivariate models. In the study 509 patients with non-metastasized breast cancer who were treated during 1988-1994 completed the questionnaire about pain in the operated breast and in the ipsilateral arm 10-58 months after surgery. The factors included in the analysis were: age, type of operation, size of the tumour, number of lymph nodes removed, involvement of lymph nodes, complications of surgery, intensity of the acute postoperative pain remembered by the patient, number of doses of analgesics, number of months from surgery, adjuvant radiotherapy, chemotherapy and endocrine treatment. The most important factors included in the models of chronic pain were: intensity of the acute postoperative pain, the type of operation, involvement of regional lymph nodes and radiotherapy.
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The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of screening for cancer in the Nordic countries. There is sufficient scientific evidence to conclude that screening for cervical cancer, breast cancer and colorectal cancer will result in a reduction in mortality. The effects on mortality were predicted for the future up to the year 2017 assuming that the Nordic countries are covered by screening as a nation-wide population-based public health policy and comparing the predicted mortality trends with those assuming no screening programmes. ⋯ In the last considered period (2008-2012) the costs per life year gained (breast cancer $15,400, colorectal cancer $5700) are approximately one half of those at the onset of screening. The differences in the costs per LYG were relatively small between the Nordic countries and mainly dependent on the differences in baseline risk of cancer. The total cost of the three screening programmes was estimated at $4400 per life years gained in the year 2010.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED)
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This synthesis of the literature on radiotherapy for brain tumors, ie, cancer originating in the central nervous system (CNS), is based on 81 scientific articles, including 25 randomized studies, 13 prospective studies, and 25 retrospective studies. These studies involve 11,081 patients. A more comprehensive chapter on brain tumors may be ordered from SBU. ⋯ Life may be extended in this group, otherwise radiotherapy does not influence survival. Stereotactic radiotherapy of solitary, mainly spherical metastases in the brain is often superior to other known methods with respect to palliation and survival. The number of patients is, however, relatively small.
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Comparative Study
A Monte-Carlo program converting activity distributions to absorbed dose distributions in a radionuclide treatment planning system.
In systemic radiation therapy, the absorbed dose distribution must be calculated from the individual activity distribution. A computer code has been developed for the conversion of an arbitrary activity distribution to a 3-D absorbed dose distribution. The activity distribution can be described either analytically or as a voxel based distribution, which comes from a SPECT acquisition. ⋯ Absorbed fractions for photons and electrons in spheres (masses between 1 g and 200 kg) are within 10-15% of those published. Radial absorbed dose distributions in a necrotic tumor show good agreement with published data. The application of the code in a radionuclide therapy dose planning system, based on quantitative SPECT, is discussed.