Optimizing Outcomes in Gallbladder Cancer: Identifying Predictors of Futile Up-Front Surgery in a Global Multi-center Study.

Background: Gallbladder cancer (GBC) has a poor prognosis, particularly in advanced stages, with surgery often offering limited survival benefit. This study aimed to identify risk factors for futile surgery (FS), defined as procedures followed by early recurrence or death.

Methods: An international cohort of 788 patients who underwent up-front GBC surgery across 18 centers was analyzed.

Best practices for engaging with affected communities: chronic hepatitis B as a case study.

Hepatitis B is the single most common cause of liver cancer, affecting > 250 million people worldwide (mostly in resource limited communities) and killing > 1 million people annually. The condition is marked by poor rates of diagnosis (14%) and treatment (8% of eligible individuals). As with many health conditions, engagement with the affected community is crucial for designing, promoting, and advocating for effective solutions in the health system.

Enhanced DTCMR with Cascaded Alignment and Adaptive Diffusion.

Diffusion tensor cardiovascular magnetic resonance (DTCMR) is the only non-invasive method for visualizing myocardial microstructure, but it is challenged by inconsistent breath-holds and imperfect cardiac triggering, causing in-plane shifts and through-plane warping with an inadequate tensor fitting. While rigid registration corrects in-plane shifts, deformable registration risks distorting the diffusion distribution, and selecting a reference frame among low SNR frames is challenging. Existing pairwise deep learning and iterative methods are unsuitable for DTCMR due to their inability to handle the drastic in-plane motion and disentangle the diffusion contrast distortion with through-plane motions on low SNR frames, which compromises the accuracy of clinical biomarker tensor estimation.

A dataset for monitoring agricultural drought in Europe.

This paper introduces the Combined Drought Indicator dataset, a collection of raster maps generated by the Copernicus European Drought Observatory for monitoring agricultural drought in Europe. Computationally, the CDI involves three indicators: the Standardized Precipitation Index, the Soil Moisture Anomaly and the Fraction of the Photosyntetically Active Radiation anomaly. These are complemented by the use of crop and snow masks.

Assessing the Acceptability of a Vaginal Self-Sampling Device in a Rural Parish of Cuenca, Ecuador.

Introduction: Cervical Cancer (CC) is a preventable and treatable disease if detected early, yet it remains a global health challenge. In Ecuador, CC is the second most common cancer; however, screening uptake remains suboptimal due to poor knowledge, low willingness, and limited access to healthcare. Traditionally, CC screening requires a healthcare professional, creating social and access barriers.