Publications by authors named "Francesca Maurizi"

Purpose: Bone metastases frequently occur during malignant disease. Palliative radiation therapy (PRT) is a crucial part of palliative care because it can relieve pain and improve patients' quality of life. Often, a clinician's survival estimation is too optimistic.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Breast IRRADIATA is a nationwide project in Italy, aimed at creating a registry for breast cancer patients treated with radiotherapy and defining care patterns, backed by the Italian Society of Radiotherapy and Clinical Oncology and the Italian League Against Cancer.
  • - A feasibility study conducted from July to October 2021 involved 17 Italian Radiation Oncology Centers and collected data from 335 breast cancer patients, demonstrating the effectiveness of a user-friendly data collection tool.
  • - Results showed that participants found the project overwhelmingly satisfactory, with 82.3% of centers rating it as excellent, supporting its potential for broader implementation and use in assessing radiotherapy care for other cancers in Italy.
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Background: Oropharyngeal mucositis occurs in virtually all patients with head and neck cancer receiving radiochemotherapy. The manipulation of the oral cavity microbiota represents an intriguing and challenging target.

Patients And Methods: A total of 75 patients were enrolled to receive Lactobacillus brevis CD2 lozenges or oral care regimen with sodium bicarbonate mouthwashes.

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Aims And Background: To evaluate the impact of preoperative chemoradiation on sphincter preservation in patients with low-medium locally advanced resectable rectal cancer treated by four chemoradiation schedules.

Materials And Methods: Between 1990 and 2002, 247 patients were treated according to four schedules of chemoradiotherapy: FUMIR (5-fluorouracil, mitomycin, external beam radiotherapy 37.8 Gy), PLAFUR (cisplatinum, 5-fluorouracil, external beam radiotherapy 50.

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Radiotherapy-induced fatigue is a common early and chronic side-effect of irradiation, reported in up to 80% and 30% of patients respectively during radiation therapy and at follow-up visits. The factors that cause fatigue and the exact mechanisms responsible for its production, sustenance, or amelioration are not well understood. Multiple correlates and mechanisms have been proposed in the literature and integrated within models of cancer-related fatigue.

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Purpose: To examine the relationship between tumor regression grade (TRG) and outcomes in patients with rectal cancer treated with preoperative therapy.

Methods And Materials: Specimens from 144 patients with cT3,4 rectal cancer who had received preoperative radiation +/- chemotherapy and had a minimum follow-up of 3 years were retrospectively reviewed. TRG, which involves examining the residual neoplastic cells and scoring the degree of both cytological changes, including nuclear pyknosis or necrosis and/or eosinophilia, as well as stromal changes, including fibrosis (either dense or edematous) with or without inflammatory infiltrate and giant-cell granulomatosis around ghost cells and keratin, was quantified in five grades according to the Mandard score (Cancer 1994;73:2680-2686).

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Aims And Background: Many studies of preoperative chemoradiation in resectable rectal cancer have focused on down-staging and sphincter-saving procedures. The aim of this study was to evaluate long-term outcome in resectable rectal cancer treated with preoperative chemoradiation and surgery by only one surgical team irrespective of the tumor downstaging.

Material And Methods: From 1992 to 2001, in a cooperative study between the Institute of Semeiotica Chirurgica and the Division of Radiotherapy of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, 27 patients with locally advanced rectal cancer were treated with preoperative chemoradiation, followed by surgery after 4-6 weeks, and, just for 6 of them, by adjuvant chemotherapy.

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