Publications by authors named "Christina Barbara Walter"

Introduction: The curriculum for a da Vinci surgeon in gynecology requires special training before a surgeon performs their first independent case, but standardized, objective assessments of a trainee's workflow or skills learned during clinical cases are lacking. This pilot study presents a methodology to evaluate intraoperative surgeon behavior in hysterectomy cases through standardized surgical step segmentation paired with objective performance indicators (OPIs) calculated directly from robotic data streams. This method can provide individual case analysis in a truly objective capacity.

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Introduction: Fertility-sparing treatment (FST) for patients with cervical cancer intends to achieve oncologic outcomes comparable to those after radical treatment while maximizing reproductive outcomes, including the ability to conceive and minimizing the risk of prematurity.

Methodology: International multicentre retrospective FERTISS study focused on patients treated with FST analysed timing of FST relative to pregnancy, conception attempts and methods, abortion rates, prophylactic procedures reducing the risk of severe prematurity, pregnancy duration, and delivery mode.

Results: Of the 733 patients treated at 44 centres in 13 countries, 49.

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Until now, limited clinical significance had been reported for disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) in gynecologic malignancies. DTCs were previously reported not to be associated with established risk factors, L1CAM immunoreactivity, and outcome in endometrial carcinoma (EC). This study's primary objective was to investigate potential correlations of DTCs in the bone marrow (BM) of EC patients with disease-related survival, and a secondary objective was to evaluate associations between molecular classification of EC and DTCs.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Breast cancer is a major cause of death for women worldwide, and despite treatment advances, there's still a risk of the cancer returning, potentially linked to distant tumor cells (DTCs).
  • - A study of 201 early breast cancer patients found differences in HER2 expression between primary tumors and DTCs, revealing that patients with mismatched HER2 statuses experienced worse survival outcomes.
  • - The research highlights the need to evaluate HER2 expression in DTCs for better treatment strategies and calls for further trials to confirm these findings and explore targeted therapies.
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Article Synopsis
  • Endometrial cancer (EC) is a common malignancy in women, and this study analyzed treatment data for over 34,000 patients in Germany from 2000 to 2020 to assess the effectiveness of various therapies.
  • The study found that minimally invasive surgery became more prevalent and was linked to better overall survival compared to traditional open surgery.
  • Additionally, advanced risk patients benefited from multimodal treatments, while specific combinations of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy showed improved survival rates, especially for high-risk and elderly patients.
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Background: Lymph node metastases (LNM) are rare in early-stage endometrial cancer, but a diagnostic systematic lymphadenectomy (LNE) is often performed to achieve reliable N-staging. Therefore, this prospective study aimed to evaluate the benefit of [18F]-Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET/MRI complementary to SPECT/CT guided sentinel lymphonodectomy (SLNE) for a less invasive N-staging Methods: 79 patients underwent a whole-body FDG-PET/MRI, SLN mapping with Tc-Nanocolloid SPECT/CT and indocyanine green (ICG) fluoroscopy followed by LNE which served as ground truth.

Results: FDG-PET/MRI was highly specific in N-staging (97.

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Background: The medical field is in the midst of a massive expansion in telemedical services. However, it is not possible to say to what extent telemedical offerings can be designed to meet needs in the German healthcare system. This study provides insights into demand-oriented care using telemedical services for gynecological patients.

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Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of pathological tumor-free margin distance on survival in SCC patients treated with surgery alone.

Methods: This retrospective study included 128 patients with node-negative disease that received no adjuvant treatment. Disease-free and overall survival were analyzed according to pathological tumor-free margin distance.

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Preclinical data suggest that neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAT) may promote micrometastatic spread. We aimed to compare the detection rate and prognostic relevance of disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) from the bone marrow (BM) of patients with early-stage breast cancer (EBC) after NAT with that of therapy-naive EBC patients. DTCs were identified from BM samples, collected during primary surgery.

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Background: One in eight women is diagnosed with breast cancer in the course of their life. As systematic palliative treatment has only a limited effect on survival rates, the concept of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) was developed for measurement of patient-centered outcomes. Various studies have already demonstrated the reliability of paper-based patient-reported outcome (pPRO) and electronic patient-reported outcome (ePRO) surveys and that the 2 means of assessment are equally valid.

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Multigene assays are being used increasingly to aid in decision-making about chemotherapy in breast cancer. Here, we present the 21-gene recurrence score (RS) of patients tested in routine clinical practice in Germany. In a retrospective analysis, 4695 patients with hormone receptor-positive and HER2-negative early breast cancer (pT1 - 3, pN0 - 1, M0) were included in whom RS testing was conducted in Germany between November 2015 and July 2018.

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One of the most common adverse events (AEs) occurring during treatment with aromatase inhibitors (AIs) is musculoskeletal pain. The aim of our study was to analyze the influence of preexisting muscle/limb pain and joint pain on the development of AI-induced musculoskeletal AEs. Women eligible for upfront adjuvant endocrine therapy with letrozole were included in the PreFace study, a multicenter phase IV trial.

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Purpose: Despite the recent expansion in the use of immunotherapy for many cancer types, it is still not a standard treatment for breast cancer. Identifying differences in the immune systems of breast cancer patients compared to healthy women might provide insight into potential targets for immunotherapy and thus may assist its clinical implementation.

Methods: Multi-colour flow cytometry was used to investigate myeloid and lymphoid populations in the peripheral blood of breast cancer patients (n = 40) and in the blood of healthy age-matched women (n = 25).

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As breast cancer is a diverse disease, clinical trials are becoming increasingly diversified and are consequently being conducted in very small subgroups of patients, making study recruitment increasingly difficult. The aim of this study was to assess the use of data from a remote data entry system that serves a large national registry for metastatic breast cancer. The PRAEGNANT network is a real-time registry with an integrated biomaterials bank that was designed as a scientific study and as a means of identifying patients who are eligible for clinical trials, based on clinical and molecular information.

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Aims: Disseminated tumor cell (DTC) detection in bone marrow (BM) of primary breast cancer patients predicts poor prognosis. This study investigates the prevalence of DTCs and their prognostic significance in primary gynecologic malignancies.

Patients & Methods: DTCs from BM aspirates of 603 patients with endometrial (311), cervical (228) and vulvar cancer (64) were identified by the pancytokeratin antibody A45B/B3.

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