A pilot study to assess the utility of SPECT/CT-based lymph node imaging to localize lymph nodes that drain the arm in patients undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

Image-guided treatment planning that minimizes irradiation of critical lymph nodes (LNs) may reduce the incidence and severity of long term complications following breast cancer treatment. This localization cannot be obtained with conventional imaging techniques and we undertook this proof of concept study to determine whether a coordinated use of SPECT and CT has sufficient precision to inform radiation planning and potentially lessen the incidental exposure of critical LNs. Thirty-two consecutive women with breast cancer were injected in the arm ipsilateral to their breast cancers prior to radiation treatment with 0.

Decisions on placement and family preservation. Agreement and targeting.

Vignettes presented to experts and workers in the child welfare field were used to explore the degree of agreement on decisions to place children in substitute care or to refer them to family preservation services. The design allowed for investigation of the problem of targeting in family preservation programs. Findings indicate considerable inconsistency in decisions among experts and workers, particularly in decisions to refer to family preservation and other in-home services.

Understanding decisions about child maltreatment.

To understand how decisions are made in abuse/neglect cases by the child welfare system, the authors asked child welfare experts and protective service line workers to make decisions about actual child abuse and neglect cases on the basis of written summaries of the cases. Respondents included 27 experts and 103 line workers. Regression analyses found that workers and experts emphasized the same case characteristics in making their decisions, but the decisions were not well structured in the sense that they were not well predicted by case characteristics.

Behavioural rehabilitation of chronic low back pain: comparison of an operant treatment, an operant-cognitive treatment and an operant-respondent treatment.

Seventy-one chronic low back pain patients were assigned to one of three behavioural rehabilitation treatments or a waiting-list condition. The first intervention consisted of an operant treatment, aimed at increasing health behaviours and activity levels and at reducing pain and illness behaviours. In the second intervention, a cognitive treatment, aimed at the reinterpretation of catastrophizing pain cognitions and at enhancing self-control, was combined with an operant treatment.