Radiological exposure evaluation through the computerised electronic records system as decisional support to X-ray examination justification in family medicine.

Background: In recent decades, patients' exposure to ionising radiation (IR) during diagnostic examinations has increased a great deal. X-ray requests do not always conform to the principle of 'justification', which emphasises the real utility and necessity of the examination. Databases maintained by general practitioners usually record all requests for radiological examinations of their patients and could be configured to assess the radiological risk for each patient.

Latency and the lung cancer epidemic among United States uranium miners.

The latency of occupational cancer was a key factor in the recent epidemic of lung cancer among U.S. uranium miners.

Permanent ventricular and dual chamber cardiac stimulation: role of pacing mode in relation to chronic atrial fibrillation risk and stroke development.

Ventricular single chamber permanent cardiac pacing undoubtedly eliminates symptoms related to extremely low cardiac rate, but also contributes to increased morbidity due to onset of permanent atrial fibrillation (PAF). Many studies have shown the superiority of atrial and dual chamber cardiac pacing in reducing atrial fibrillation risk and in preventing correlated embolic complications. It is not known, however, if this advantage is maintained in the elderly and in particular in the oldest old people.

Predicting lung cancer by detecting aberrant promoter methylation in sputum.

Despite the promise of using DNA markers for the early detection of cancer, none has proven universally applicable to the most common and lethal forms of human malignancy. Lung carcinoma, the leading cause of tumor-related death, is a key example of a cancer for which mortality could be greatly reduced through the development of sensitive molecular markers detectable at the earliest stages of disease. By increasing the sensitivity of a PCR approach to detect methylated DNA sequences, we now demonstrate that aberrant methylation of the p16 and/or O6-methyl-guanine-DNA methyltransferase promoters can be detected in DNA from sputum in 100% of patients with squamous cell lung carcinoma up to 3 years before clinical diagnosis.

Five year survival and later outcome of patients with X-ray occult lung cancer detected by sputum cytology.

Background: A cohort of 51 consecutive patients with roentgenographically occult lung cancer, identified by sputum cytology and confirmed by bronchoscopy was reported previously.

Methods: All patients have now been followed beyond 5 years and the causes of death ascertained.

Results: The actual 5-year survival of 27 patients who were resected for cure was 74% including death for all causes.