An evaluation of the mid-ventilation method for the planning of stereotactic lung plans.

Background And Purpose: Stereotactic ablative body radiotherapy for lung plans requires 4DCT. Most radiotherapy centres use this to determine an internal target volume (ITV), despite studies suggesting that planning on a mid-ventilation (Mid-V) phase can reduce target volumes. The purpose of this study is two-fold: to determine whether the Mid-V approach provides adequate coverage and to discuss methods to enable the Mid-V approach to be applied more widely.

Using free text information to explore how and when GPs code a diagnosis of ovarian cancer: an observational study using primary care records of patients with ovarian cancer.

Background: Primary care databases provide a unique resource for healthcare research, but most researchers currently use only the Read codes for their studies, ignoring information in the free text, which is much harder to access.

Objectives: To investigate how much information on ovarian cancer diagnosis is 'hidden' in the free text and the time lag between a diagnosis being described in the text or in a hospital letter and the patient being given a Read code for that diagnosis.

Design: Anonymised free text records from the General Practice Research Database of 344 women with a Read code indicating ovarian cancer between 1 June 2002 and 31 May 2007 were used to compare the date at which the diagnosis was first coded with the date at which the diagnosis was recorded in the free text.

Determining the date of diagnosis--is it a simple matter? The impact of different approaches to dating diagnosis on estimates of delayed care for ovarian cancer in UK primary care.

Background: Studies of cancer incidence and early management will increasingly draw on routine electronic patient records. However, data may be incomplete or inaccurate. We developed a generalizable strategy for investigating presenting symptoms and delays in diagnosis using ovarian cancer as an example.