Treatment decision-making for patients with incurable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is complex due to the rapidly increasing number of treatments and discovery of new biomarkers. Decision support systems (DSS) could assist thoracic oncologists (TO) weighing of the pros and cons of treatments in order to arrive at an evidence-based and personalized treatment advice. Our aim is to inventory (1) TO's needs with regard to DSS in the treatment of incurable (stage IIIB/IV) NSCLC patients, and (2) preferences regarding the development of future tools in this field.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Med Inform Decis Mak
October 2017
Background: Individually tailored cancer treatment is essential to ensure optimal treatment and resource use. Treatments for incurable metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are evolving rapidly, and decision support systems (DSS) for this patient population have been developed to balance benefits and harms for decision-making. The aim of this systematic review was to inventory DSS for stage IIIB/IV NSCLC patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The study was designed to investigate whether beryllium exposure was related to illness diagnosed as sarcoidosis. Chronic beryllium disease (CBD) and sarcoidosis are clinically and pathologically indistinguishable, with only the presence of beryllium-specific T-lymphocytes identifying CBD. Testing for such cells is not feasible in community studies of sarcoidosis but a second characteristic of CBD, its much greater incidence in those with a glutamic acid residue at position 69 of the HLA-DPB1 gene (Glu69), provides an alternative approach to answering this question.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: This study examined the effects of 2 types of supramalleolar orthoses on gross motor skills of young children with Down syndrome.
Methods: Two children participated in this prospective single-subject, alternating treatment design with 3 conditions: baseline phase with shoes but without orthoses (A), first intervention phase (B1), and second intervention phase (B2). The Gross Motor Function Measure was used to collect data on motor skills.
Ionizing radiation (IR) is a curative treatment for many human malignancies, an important diagnostic modality, and a pivotal preparative regimen for bone marrow transplantation. On the other hand, IR is a potent damaging agent that can affect a variety of processes in directly exposed cells, in their descendents, and in neighboring un-irradiated naïve 'bystander' cells. Accumulation of DNA damage caused by IR in conjunction with disrupted cellular regulation processes can lead to genome instability in the germline, and therefore to transgenerational genome instability in offspring of exposed males.
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