Cancer
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Combination chemotherapy, including hybrid regimens, is the standard treatment for patients with advanced Hodgkin disease (HD). Although a prolonged complete response (CR) is achieved in up to 70-80% of patients, long term complications, such as secondary leukemia, are of concern. Cyclophosphamide, vincristine, procarbazine, prednisone, doxorubicin, bleomycin, and vinblastine (C-MOPP/ABV) is a hybrid chemotherapy in which cyclophosphamide is substituted for mechlorethamine, an agent that has been implicated as the cause of secondary malignancies. ⋯ C-MOPP/ABV induces CR with acceptable toxicity in a high proportion of advanced HD patients.
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The Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (ESAS) is a nine-item patient-rated symptom visual analogue scale developed for use in assessing the symptoms of patients receiving palliative care. The purpose of this study was to validate the ESAS in a different population of patients. ⋯ For this population, the ESAS was a valid instrument; test-retest validity was better at 2 days than at 1 week. The ESAS "distress" score tends to reflect physical well-being. The use of a 30-mm cutoff point on visual analogue scales to identify severe symptoms may not always apply to symptoms other than pain.
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Evidence that avoiding axillary lymph node dissection (AxD) strikes an appropriate balance between morbidity and recurrence risk in patients with invasive breast carcinoma generally is anecdotal and without a formally quantified basis. The current study presents a decision analysis of the difference in 5-year disease free survival (DFS) rate between treatment scenarios with and without routine AxD. ⋯ In patients with a low risk of lymph node metastases, it was estimated that eliminating AxD may result in only minimal changes in the estimated 5-year DFS rate.
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Review Comparative Study
Surgery versus radiation therapy for patients with aggressive fibromatosis or desmoid tumors: A comparative review of 22 articles.
Desmoid tumors (aggressive fibromatoses) are benign neoplasms with high rates of recurrence after surgery. Radiotherapy is sometimes reported to prevent recurrences, but not in all studies. In order to evaluate the effect of radiation, comparative analysis was performed. ⋯ RT or S + RT results in significantly better local control than S. Even after dividing the groups into cases with free and positive margins and cases with primary and recurrent tumors, the best local control is achieved with RT or S + RT.
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Multicenter Study
Measuring quality of life of Chinese cancer patients: A validation of the Chinese version of the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General (FACT-G) scale.
Few cancer specific quality-of-life (QoL) measures from the West have been translated for use with Chinese-speaking patients, and no substantial validation of these translations with adequately large cohorts has been published previously, to the authors' knowledge. The Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General (FACT-G) is a well-validated QoL instrument that is specific to cancer patients. The scale was translated into Chinese and the psychometric properties of this translated scale (FACT-G [Ch]) were tested with a Chinese sample in Hong Kong, China. ⋯ Focus group data indicated that the FACT-G translation into Chinese was seen as a conceptually relevant and moderately sufficient QoL measure. Psychometrically, the instrument had acceptable properties, but conceptual differences from the original version were suggested. Although more work is needed to increase its adequacy, the translated scale has reasonable utility for use with Chinese populations in clinical settings.