J Buon
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A multidisciplinary approach to the treatment of patients with malignant diseases requires adequate venous access in order to safely administer chemotherapy, blood transfusion and blood products, antibiotics, rehydratation and total parenteral nutrition. The insertion of the central venous catheter (CVC), its use and its maintenance can be accompanied by multiple complications. ⋯ Insertion of the CVC carries the possibility of serious complications (thrombosis, infections, occlusions). However, correct implantation and handling performed by experienced and trained surgical and other medical staff significantly decrease the incidence of these complications. The use of the CVC has greatly improved the quality of life and also decreased the morbidity and mortality of the cancer patients in our study.
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Modified Response Evaluation Criteria In Solid Tumors (mRECIST), developed by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) criteria measure changes in arterialized hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and aim at providing a common framework for the design of clinical trials. It still isn't determined whether mRECIST can be applied in routine clinical practice and whether mRECIST could estimate viable tumor correctly. ⋯ Although mRECIST criteria show a good correlation with prognosis, they demand strict requirements for patient selection and couldn't be useful as a tool for routine clinical practice. Furthermore, merely by means of contrast-enhanced CT or MRI, mRECIST couldn't estimate viable tumor sufficiently.
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Cigarette smoking was regarded as the most important carcinogenic factor of lung cancer, yet in recent years lung cancer in never-smokers is an increasingly prominent public health issue. The aim of this study was to assess the epidemiological and clinicopathological characteristics of never-smoker patients with non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), focusing on clinical risk factors and survival. ⋯ Although no difference in survival was seen, definite epidemiologic differences do exist between never- smokers and ever-smokers patients with NSCLC. Future efforts should focus on the underlying biological differences, and on identifying potential non-tobacco related risk factors in order to improve treatment strategies for these two groups of NSCLC patients.
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Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) delivers a potent, highly focused dose of radiation to the tumor while sparing the surrounding normal tissues. The purpose of this study was to assess the outcome of patients with intracranial meningiomas treated with SRS. ⋯ SRS for patients with multiple intracranial meningiomas is effective yielding a high rate of local tumor control, whereas treatment-related morbidity remains low.