In 2005, more than 22,000 American women were diagnosed with ovarian cancer and 16,000 women died from the disease. The five-year relative survival rate for stage III and IV disease is 31%, and the five-year relative survival rate for stage I is 95%. Early diagnosis should lower the fatality rate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScreening for illness should be an evidence-based activity. Screening tests are useful only if they reduce mortality or morbidity. Therefore, healthcare professionals must know how to evaluate research about screening tests to be sure that, in fact, the tests actually accomplish their goals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChronic neuropathic pain poses a treatment challenge, and is associated with significant psychologic distress, physical disability, and impaired functioning, which impact the activities of daily living. Efforts to provide relief are often inadequate and/or require polypharmacy. This has spurred interest among researchers and clinicians alike to develop early, intensive treatments that target the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in pain transduction, transmission, and modulation, or ideally, that prevent neuropathic pain from occurring in the first place.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOpioid therapy for pain is the subject of numerous randomized clinical trials. Opioids are being developed for delivery by a wide variety of mechanisms. New opioids are becoming available for clinical use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecent discoveries in opioid pharmacology help explain the enormous variability in clinical responses to these powerful analgesics. Although there is only one m opioid receptor gene, splice variants of that gene's expression result in a panoply of different functioning receptors. Other sources of variable response include polymorphisms in the m opioid receptor regulatory region, and pharmacokinetic differences because of cytochrome P-450 mono-oxygenase heterogeneity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHematol Oncol Clin North Am
February 2002
Pancreatic cancer is most frequently a fatal disease with many associated morbidities. Clinicians skilled in its treatment are adept at management of symptoms caused by local and systemic effects of the malignancy. Patients should be assured that there are many treatments that can be used aggressively to maintain their comfort and independence for as long as possible.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To determine the efficacy of fluorouracil (5-FU) plus eniluracil when administered to patients with previously untreated metastatic colorectal cancer.
Patients And Methods: In this single-arm phase II study, patients with previously untreated metastatic colorectal cancer received oral eniluracil plus 5-FU (10:1 dose ratio), at 5-FU doses of 1.00 mg/m(2) or 1.
J Pain Symptom Manage
January 2000
MorphiDex, a 1:1 combination of dextromethorphan and morphine, provides satisfactory pain control at a significantly lower morphine daily dose. To determine the appropriate conversion regimens from other oral or transdermal opioid analgesics to MorphiDex (MS:DM), 592 patients with moderate to severe chronic pain requiring daily use of opioid analgesics were enrolled in this multicenter, open-label study. Patients were instructed to use MS:DM as needed to achieve satisfactory pain control.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPURPOSE: To compare the efficacy and safety of oral ondansetron with i.v. granisetron each given as a single dose prior to administration of highly emetogenic cisplatin chemotherapy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Ames Salmonella plate assay was employed to test urine samples from bladder cancer patients and controls living in Egypt for the presence of chemical mutagens. Urine from five groups of Egyptian adults were tested, including individuals with (1) neither bilharziasis nor bladder cancer, (2) urinary bilharziasis and normal urinary cytology, (3) urinary bilharziasis and atypical urinary cytology, (4) carcinoma of the bilharzial bladder, and (5) bladder cancer without bilharziasis. Plates treated with histidine dependent bacteria, S-9 mix, beta-glucuronidases and 0.
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