Publications by authors named "Ali Hajjar"
Background & Aims: Guidelines recommend biannual surveillance for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in hepatitis C individuals with cirrhosis if the HCC incidence rate is above 1.5 per 100 person-years (PY). However, the incidence threshold for surveillance in individuals who achieve a virologic cure is unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Diabetes mellitus has been associated with increased breast cancer (BC) risk; however, the magnitude of this effect is uncertain. This study focused on BC risk for women with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).
Methods: Two separate meta-analyses were conducted (1) to estimate the relative risk (RR) of BC for women with T2DM and (2) to evaluate the risk of BC for women with T2DM associated with the use of metformin, a common diabetes treatment.
Optimal breast cancer risk reduction policies tailored to personal risk level.
Health Care Manag Sci
September 2022
Depending on personal and hereditary factors, each woman has a different risk of developing breast cancer, one of the leading causes of death for women. For women with a high-risk of breast cancer, their risk can be reduced by two main therapeutic approaches: 1) preventive treatments such as hormonal therapies (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Successful treatment of chronic hepatitis C with oral DAAs can lead to a viral cure, but patients still face an ongoing risk of developing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), prompting the need for surveillance.
- A microsimulation model was used to assess the cost-effectiveness of biannual HCC surveillance for patients who have been cured, comparing varying durations of monitoring against no surveillance.
- Results showed that biannual surveillance is cost-effective for cured patients, detecting more early-stage HCC cases and yielding additional quality-adjusted life years, with optimal surveillance stopping at age 70 for cirrhosis patients and age 60 for those with advanced fibrosis.
Background: Women with Down syndrome have a lower breast cancer risk and significantly lower life expectancies than women without Down syndrome. Therefore, it is not clear whether mammography screening strategies used for women without Down syndrome would benefit women with Down syndrome in the same way.
Objective: To determine the benefits and harms of various mammography screening strategies for women with Down syndrome using collaborative simulation modeling.
Objectives: Adjuvant paclitaxel and trastuzumab has been shown to be an effective regimen with low risk of cancer recurrence and treatment-related toxicities in early-stage node-negative, HER2-positive breast cancer. We investigated the cost-effectiveness of this regimen.
Methods: A Markov-based microsimulation model with six health states is used to simulate four adjuvant therapy options for women with early-stage node-negative, HER2-positive breast cancer at different age groups.