Tumori
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Although the long-term survival of cancer patients has risen during the last decades, little is known about their quality of life. Assessment of the long-term effect of disease and treatments on subjective qualitative aspects of life that are related to health may be important for identifying specific long-term sequelae of cancer and treatments. In order to better understand the outcomes on a long-term survivor population, a sample of breast and colon cancer patients was evaluated using state-of-the-art health-related quality of life (HRQoL) approaches and instruments ⋯ Our study supports the hypotheses that the impact of cancer on quality of life over a period of time is not necessarily devastating in survivors. As regards the impact of different medical strategies, although our data are consistent with other research supporting the hypotheses that hormone therapy does not cause a decrease in long-term quality of life, differences we observed between hormone and chemotherapy might be caused by the action of confounds we were not able to control for or by the distortion introduced by the design of the present study.
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Screening for colorectal cancer by fecal occult-blood testing has been shown to be effective in reducing colorectal cancer mortality. Total colonoscopy is the test of choice for the assessment of fecal occult blood-positive subjects. Double-contrast barium enema is commonly employed to study the rest of the colon when colonoscopy is incomplete. The present study evaluated the contribution of double-contrast barium enema in detecting neoplastic lesions of the colon in fecal occult-blood-positive subjects with incomplete colonoscopy. ⋯ Double-contrast barium enema was useful in detecting colorectal cancer beyond the range reached by incomplete colonoscopy, whereas our data confirmed a lower sensitivity of double-contrast barium enema for polyps. The diagnostic contribution observed in the present survey confirms the opportunity of performing double-contrast barium enema as a routine adjunct to incomplete colonoscopy. Nevertheless, in order to maximize the detection rate of adenomas, the rate of total colonoscopy should be kept as high as possible.