The (In-)Ability to Effectively Critique a Method Undermines the Validity of the Criticism.

Level of Evidence III This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors  www.springer.

Current Knowledge on Breast Implant-Associated Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma: Evidence from Italian Ministry of Health Registry Data.

Background: Accurate estimation of Breast Implant-Associated Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma (BIA-ALCL) incidence is crucial for assessing breast-implant-associated risk. However, the size of the implanted population worldwide is unknown, making it challenging to appropriately estimate this figure. This study aims to provide a new reliable and reproducible method to estimate the breast-implanted-population (BIP), reporting a reliable annual BIA-ALCL incidence estimate.

Data-Driven Thyroglobulin Cutoffs for Low- and Intermediate-Risk Thyroid Cancer Follow-Up: ITCO Real-World Analysis.

Context: The utility of thyroglobulin (Tg) in the follow-up of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) patients has been well-documented. Although third-generation immunoassays have improved accuracy, limitations persist (interfering anti-Tg antibodies and measurement variability). Evolving treatment strategies require a reevaluation of Tg thresholds for optimal patient management.

Evaluation of Statistical Treatment of Left-Censored Contamination Data: Example Involving Deoxynivalenol Occurrence in Pasta and Pasta Substitute Products.

The handling of data on food contamination frequently represents a challenge because these are often left-censored, being composed of both positive and non-detected values. The latter observations are not quantified and provide only the information that they are below a laboratory-specific threshold value. Besides deterministic approaches, which simplify the treatment through the substitution of non-detected values with fixed threshold or null values, a growing interest has been shown in the application of stochastic approaches to the treatment of unquantified values.

Quality of life and sexual functioning among endometrial cancer patients treated with one week adjuvant high-dose-rate vaginal brachytherapy schedule.

Purpose: To examine quality of life (QOL) and sexual functioning in a series of patients with intermediate- and high-intermediate risk endometrial cancer, treated with exclusive adjuvant one week high-dose-rate (HDR) vaginal brachytherapy (VBT) schedule.

Material And Methods: Between July 2008 and October 2013, 55 patients with diagnosis of endometrial cancer were treated with adjuvant exclusive VBT. All patients had undergone surgical treatment with a laparotomy approach before VBT.

Minimal Extrathyroidal Extension in Predicting 1-Year Outcomes: A Longitudinal Multicenter Study of Low-to-Intermediate-Risk Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma (ITCO#4).

The role of minimal extrathyroidal extension (mETE) as a risk factor for persistent papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is still debated. The aims of this study were to assess the clinical impact of mETE as a predictor of worse initial treatment response in PTC patients and to verify the impact of radioiodine therapy after surgery in patients with mETE. We reviewed all records in the Italian Thyroid Cancer Observatory database and selected 2237 consecutive patients with PTC who satisfied the inclusion criteria (PTC with no lymph node metastases and at least 1 year of follow-up).

Predictors of Lung Cancer Risk: An Ecological Study Using Mortality and Environmental Data by Municipalities in Italy.

Lung cancer (LC) mortality remains a consistent part of the total deaths occurring worldwide. Its etiology is complex as it involves multifactorial components. This work aims in providing an epidemiological assessment on occupational and environmental factors associated to LC risk by means of an ecological study involving the 8092 Italian municipalities for the period 2006-2015.

Selective Use of Radioactive Iodine Therapy for Papillary Thyroid Cancers With Low or Lower-Intermediate Recurrence Risk.

Context: Current guidelines recommend a selective use of radioiodine treatment (RAI) for papillary thyroid cancer (PTC).

Objective: This work aimed to determine how policy changes affect the use of RAI and the short-term outcomes of patients.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of longitudinal data was conducted in an academic referral center of patients with nonaggressive PTC variants; no extrathyroidal invasion or limited to soft tissues, no distant metastases, and 5 or fewer central-compartment cervical lymph node metastases.

Residual Site Radiotherapy After Immunochemotherapy in Primary Mediastinal B-Cell Lymphoma: A Monoinstitutional Retrospective Study.

Aim: To evaluate the efficacy of residual site radiation therapy (RSRT) on local control (LC), progression-free (PFS) and overall (OS) survival in patients with primary mediastinal lymphoma (PMBCL), following rituximab and chemotherapy treatment (ICHT).

Patients And Methods: The study included 34 patients with PMBCL treated between 2006 and 2014 with ICHT with/without autologous stem cell transplantation and RSRT. Between the end of ICHT/stem cell transplantation and RSRT, patients were evaluated with F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron-emission tomography.

Upper bound estimators of the population size based on ordinal models for capture-recapture experiments.

Capture-recapture studies have attracted a lot of attention over the past few decades, especially in applied disciplines where a direct estimate for the size of a population of interest is not available. Epidemiology, ecology, public health, and biodiversity are just a few examples. The estimation of the number of unseen units has been a challenge for theoretical statisticians, and considerable progress has been made in providing lower bound estimators for the population size.

Finite Mixtures of Hidden Markov Models for Longitudinal Responses Subject to Drop out.

Drop out is a typical issue in longitudinal studies. When the missingness is non-ignorable, inference based on the observed data only may be biased. This paper is motivated by the Leiden 85+ study, a longitudinal study conducted to analyze the dynamics of cognitive functioning in the elderly.

A bidimensional finite mixture model for longitudinal data subject to dropout.

In longitudinal studies, subjects may be lost to follow up and, thus, present incomplete response sequences. When the mechanism underlying the dropout is nonignorable, we need to account for dependence between the longitudinal and the dropout process. We propose to model such a dependence through discrete latent effects, which are outcome-specific and account for heterogeneity in the univariate profiles.

Normal human adipose tissue functions and differentiation in patients with biallelic inactivating mutations.

Lipin-1 is a Mg-dependent phosphatidic acid phosphatase (PAP) that in mice is necessary for normal glycerolipid biosynthesis, controlling adipocyte metabolism, and adipogenic differentiation. Mice carrying inactivating mutations in the gene display the characteristic features of human familial lipodystrophy. Very little is known about the roles of lipin-1 in human adipocyte physiology.

Growth curves of "normal" serum total IgE levels throughout childhood: A quantile analysis in a birth cohort.

Background: Previous studies of serum total IgE (t-IgE) were not able to discriminate well-enough atopic from non-atopic subjects, that is, with or without serum-specific IgE antibodies to allergens.

Objectives: To model growth curves of the total IgE levels in children without atopic sensitization (hereafter defined as "normal" t-IgE levels) and to test their usefulness in predicting atopic sensitization.

Methods: The German Multicentre Allergy Study (MAS), a birth cohort with 1314 recruited newborns, began in 1990 and examined the participants until age 20 years.

Second cancer incidence in primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma treated with methotrexate with leucovorin rescue, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, prednisone, and bleomycin regimen with or without rituximab and mediastinal radiotherapy: Results from a monoinstitutional cohort analysis of long-term survivors.

Our aim is to assess the incidence of second cancer in long-time surviving primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma (PMBCL) patients treated with combined radiochemoimmunotherapy (standard methotrexate with leucovorin rescue, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, prednisone, and bleomycin with rituximab and mediastinal radiation therapy at a dose of 30 to 36 Gy). For this purpose, 92 points were evaluated. After a median overall survival of 137 months (range 76-212), we recorded second cancer in 3 of 80 long-surviving patients (3.

Mixed hidden Markov quantile regression models for longitudinal data with possibly incomplete sequences.

Quantile regression provides a detailed and robust picture of the distribution of a response variable, conditional on a set of observed covariates. Recently, it has be been extended to the analysis of longitudinal continuous outcomes using either time-constant or time-varying random parameters. However, in real-life data, we frequently observe both temporal shocks in the overall trend and individual-specific heterogeneity in model parameters.

A flexible ratio regression approach for zero-truncated capture-recapture counts.

Capture-recapture methods are used to estimate the size of a population of interest which is only partially observed. In such studies, each member of the population carries a count of the number of times it has been identified during the observational period. In real-life applications, only positive counts are recorded, and we get a truncated at zero-observed distribution.