Publications by authors named "Manz C"

Limited data exist on cancer screening in carceral facilities. This study evaluates the feasibility and outcomes of a population-based lung cancer screening initiative in a carceral setting. This is a retrospective review of a lung cancer screening event at the Rhode Island Department of Corrections.

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Context: Timely and transparent serious illness conversations (SIC) between family caregivers and patients facilitate high-quality end-of-life care and patients' and family caregivers' mental wellbeing, but frequently do not occur, happen too late, or are incomplete. While social relations and roles shape communication, few studies explore their influence on patient-caregiver SICs.

Objectives: Investigate how the parent-child relation and roles shape SICs between cancer patients and their adult-child caregivers (ACC), the largest caregiver population.

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Context: Efficiently tracking Advance Care Planning (ACP) documentation in electronic heath records (EHRs) is essential for quality improvement and research efforts. The use of large language models (LLMs) offers a novel approach to this task.

Objectives: To evaluate the ability of LLMs to identify ACP in EHRs for patients with advanced cancer and compare performance to gold-standard manual chart review and natural language processing (NLP).

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Background: From 2007 to 2017, sorafenib was the sole systemic therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but nine new therapies were approved from 2017 to 2022. No studies have yet examined population-level treatment patterns for HCC since these approvals.

Methods: For this retrospective cohort, Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicare data were used to identify patients who had HCC diagnosed between 2014 and 2019 with claims through 2020.

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Short interfering RNA (siRNA) represents a rapidly expanding class of marketed oligonucleotide therapeutics. Due to its double-stranded nature, the characterization of siRNA is twofold: (i) at the single-strand (denaturing) level for impurity profiling and (ii) at the intact (nondenaturing) level to confirm duplex formation and quantify excess single strands (including single strand-derived impurities). While denaturing analysis can be carried out using conventional ion-pair reversed-phase liquid chromatography (IP-RPLC), nondenaturing characterization of siRNA is a significantly less straightforward task.

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Purpose: Serious illness conversations (SICs) are discussions between clinicians and cancer patients about illness understanding, information preferences, and goals of care. Interventions to prompt SICs increase SIC rates and improve care delivery near the end of life. This embedded substudy examined SIC barriers and facilitators among "refractory" patients without an SIC despite enrollment in an SIC clinical trial.

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Purpose: Oncology treatment pathways provide decision support and encourage guideline adherence. Pathway data combined with electronic health record (EHR) data can identify patient populations with poor prognoses, low serious illness conversation (SIC) rates, and high acute care utilization that may benefit from targeted interventions.

Patients And Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort analysis among adults with cancer treated at seven affiliated sites of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) who had navigations within 21 treatment pathways between July 29, 2019, and March 8, 2023.

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This study examined the association of county-level jail and state-level prison incarceration rates and cancer mortality rates in the United States. Incarceration rates (1995-2018) were sourced from national data and categorized into quartiles. County- and state-level mortality rates (2000-2019) with invasive cancer as the underlying cause of death were obtained from the National Vital Statistics System.

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Background: Serious illness conversations (SICs) in the outpatient setting may improve mood and quality of life among patients with cancer and decrease aggressive end-of-life care. Interventions informed by behavioral economics may increase rates of SICs between oncology clinicians and patients, but the impact of these interventions on end-of-life spending is unknown.

Methods: This study is a secondary analysis of a stepped-wedge cluster randomized, controlled trial that involved nine medical oncology practices and their high-risk patients at a large academic institution between June 2019 and April 2020.

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Article Synopsis
  • Clear documentation of serious illness conversations is crucial for ensuring patient information is accurately reflected in their future care plans.
  • The study analyzed documentation methods in electronic health records for patients with advanced cancer to compare the nuances of structured tabs versus free-text notes.
  • Findings revealed that structured records tended to capture fears and understanding of illness, while free-text notes often detailed treatment preferences and advance directive discussions, indicating a need for improved documentation practices.
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Serious illness communications are crucial elements of care delivery for patients with cancer. High-quality serious illness communications are composed of open, honest discussions between patients, caregivers, and clinicians regarding patient's communication preferences, expected illness trajectory, prognosis, and risks and benefits of any recommended care. High-quality communication ideally starts at the time of a patients' cancer diagnosis, allows space for and response to patient emotions, elicits patients' values and care preferences, and is iterative and longitudinal.

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Background: Patients with advanced cancer undergoing chemotherapy experience significant symptoms and declines in functional status, which are associated with poor outcomes. Remote monitoring of patient-reported outcomes (PROs; symptoms) and step counts (functional status) may proactively identify patients at risk of hospitalization or death.

Objective: The aim of this study is to evaluate the association of (1) longitudinal PROs with step counts and (2) PROs and step counts with hospitalization or death.

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subgenus is a group of ectomycorrhizal basidiomycetes, usually with large pileate fruitbodies. European members of the group are characterised by the absence of bright colours on the surfaces of their pilei, the context turning grey to black after cutting, the abundance of short lamellulae in the hymenophore, and spores with an inamyloid suprahilar spot and with low reticulate ornamentation. Our multi-locus phylogenetic study confirmed that this morphological delimitation corresponds to a well-supported clade.

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Advancements in precision medicine and genomics have led to prospects in a wide range of clinical fields, including oncology. In particular, developments in next-generation sequencing multigene panel tests have led to the possibility of tailoring treatment to the specific genomic markers of a patient's cancer. However, findings from current literature suggest that the path to implementation and uptake of genomic medicine is not without uncertainties and challenges.

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Patient-centered cancer care requires communication between patients and clinicians about patients' goals, values, and preferences. Serious illness communication improves patient and caregiver outcomes, the value and quality of cancer care, and the well-being of clinicians. Despite these benefits, there are competing factors including time, capacity, bandwidth, and resistance.

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Purpose: Routine collection of patient-generated health data (PGHD) may promote earlier recognition of symptomatic and functional decline. This trial assessed the impact of an intervention integrating remote PGHD collection with patient nudges on symptom and functional status understanding between patients with advanced cancer and their oncology team.

Methods: This three-arm randomized controlled trial was conducted from November 19, 2020, to December 17, 2021, at a large tertiary oncology practice.

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The cancer disparities between people with incarceration histories compared with those who do not have those histories are vast. Opportunities for bolstering cancer equity among those impacted by mass incarceration exist in criminal legal system policy; carceral, community, and public health linkages; better cancer prevention, screening, and treatment services in carceral settings; expansion of health insurance; education of professionals; and use of carceral sites for health promotion and transition to community care. Clinicians, researchers, persons with a history of incarceration, carceral administrators, policy makers, and community advocates could play a cancer equity role in each of these areas.

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Individuals who have been incarcerated or under community supervision have elevated cancer mortality. This review summarizes existing knowledge on implementation and outcomes of cancer screening for justice-involved individuals to identify opportunities for reducing cancer disparities. This scoping review identified 16 studies published between January 1990 and June 2021 that reported cancer screening rates and outcomes in U.

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Fucose is a signaling carbohydrate that is attached at the end of glycan processing. It is involved in a range of processes, such as the selectin-dependent leukocyte adhesion or pathogen-receptor interactions. Mass-spectrometric techniques, which are commonly used to determine the structure of glycans, frequently show fucose-containing chimeric fragments that obfuscate the analysis.

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Importance: Serious illness conversations (SICs) between oncology clinicians and patients are associated with improved quality of life and may reduce aggressive end-of-life care. However, most patients with cancer die without a documented SIC.

Objective: To test the impact of behavioral nudges to clinicians to prompt SICs on the SIC rate and end-of-life outcomes among patients at high risk of death within 180 days (high-risk patients) as identified by a machine learning algorithm.

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Importance: Treatment options are limited for patients with advanced pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) beyond first-line 5-fluorouracil, leucovorin, irinotecan, and oxaliplatin (FOLFIRINOX), with such individuals commonly being treated with gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel.

Objective: To determine whether NPC-1C, an antibody directed against MUC5AC, might increase the efficacy of second-line gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel in patients with advanced PDAC.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This multicenter, randomized phase II clinical trial enrolled patients with advanced PDAC between April 2014 and March 2017 whose disease had progressed on first-line FOLFIRINOX.

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Paclitaxel synthesis in Taxus cells correlates with a cell-fate switch that leads to vacuoles of a glossy appearance and vermiform mitochondria. This switch depends on actin and apoplastic respiratory burst. Plant cell fermentation, the production of valuable products in plant cell culture, has great potential as sustainable alternative to the exploitation of natural resources for compounds of pharmaceutical interest.

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