Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep
November 2024
Purpose Of Review: Stroke incidence and outcomes are disproportionately unfavorable among Indigenous populations in Western colonized countries. These inequities are often attributed to poor health literacy. This paper summarizes recent evidence on the topic of Indigenous health literacy, describes current gaps, and proposes priorities for future work/research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnn Allergy Asthma Immunol
September 2024
In 2021, Ontario Health (Cancer Care Ontario) introduced a quality-based procedure model for the funding of radiation treatment (RT) in Ontario. This model ties reimbursement to patient care activities, ensuring equity and transparency in funding. Over 200 RT interprofessionals (oncologists, therapists and physicists) participated on 22 expert panels to establish or identify 288 evidence-based RT protocols and 672 quality expectations (QEs) to optimally deliver RT, which eventually led to the micro-costing of all protocols.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In 2016, a sexual health guideline recommended that the first step to addressing sexual health and dysfunction resulting from cancer and its treatment is for healthcare providers to initiate sexual health conversations with patients. To action this, a sexual health knowledge translation (KT) pilot was developed.
Methods: The Relationships, Body image, and Intimacy (RBI) pilot was implemented at four regional cancer centres (RCCs) from January 2018 to February 2020 which focused on medical radiation therapists (MRT(T)s) initiating conversations with radiation therapy patients.
Background: Recently, there has been significant focus on the effects of anesthesia on the developing brain. Concern is heightened in children <3 years of age requiring lengthy and/or multiple anesthetics. Hypospadias correction is common in otherwise healthy children and may require both lengthy and repeated anesthetics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Peer review (PR) is an important component in ensuring high-quality lung radiotherapy (RT) plans. However, there are inconsistencies in the extent, timing, and minimum requirements for PR. We sought to develop guidelines of best practices for PR in curative lung RT through an expert consensus process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Purpose: Sampling theory and operator characteristic curves are methods that can determine an optimal schedule for quality control tests. We apply this method to positional data for whole breast radiotherapy since several surveys report inconsistent image guidance practice for this technique.
Materials And Methods: Positional errors were defined, for 55 consecutive breast cancer patients, by comparing the central lung distance measured on portal images with that obtained from the corresponding digitally reconstructed radiograph.
Gene duplication creates a second copy of a gene either in tandem to the ancestral locus or dispersed to another chromosomal location. When the ancestral copy of a dispersed duplicate is lost from the genome, it creates the appearance that the gene was "relocated" from the ancestral locus to the derived location. Gene relocations may be as common as canonical dispersed duplications in which both the ancestral and derived copies are retained.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To describe the outcomes of peer review across all 14 cancer centers in Ontario.
Methods And Materials: We identified all peer-reviewed, curative treatment plans delivered in Ontario within a 3-month study period from 2013 to 2014 using a provincial cancer treatment database and collected additional data on the peer-review outcomes.
Results: Considerable variation was found in the proportion of peer-reviewed plans across the centers (average 70.
J Oncol Pract
January 2016
Purpose: Peer review of radiation treatment (RT) plans is a key component of quality assurance programs in radiation medicine. A 2011 current state assessment identified considerable variation in the percentage of RT plans peer reviewed across Ontario's 14 cancer centers.In response, Cancer Care Ontario launched an initiative to increase peer review of plans for patients receiving radical intent RT.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Peer review of radiation oncology treatment plans is increasingly recognized as an important component of quality assurance in radiation treatment planning and delivery. Peer review of treatment plans can directly improve the quality of those plans and can also have indirect effects on radiation treatment programs. We undertook a systematic, qualitative approach to describing the indirect benefits of peer review, factors that were seen to facilitate or act as barriers to the implementation of peer review, and strategies to address these barriers across a provincial jurisdiction of radiation oncology programs (ROPs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground & Aims: Levels of the thiopurine metabolites 6-thioguanine nucleotide (6-TGN) and 6-methylmercaptopurine commonly are monitored during thiopurine therapy for inflammatory bowel disease despite this test's high cost and poor prediction of clinical response (sensitivity, 62%; specificity, 72%). We investigated whether patterns in common laboratory parameters might be used to identify appropriate immunologic responses to thiopurine and whether they are more accurate than measurements of thiopurine metabolites in identifying patients who respond to therapy.
Methods: We identified 774 patients with inflammatory bowel disease on thiopurine therapy using metabolite and standard laboratory tests over a 24-hour time period.
Forty-eight mothers and their 11-year-old children, who were participants in a longitudinal study, were interviewed in their home after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Children's verbatim statements were analyzed for fear, separation anxiety, denial, rationalization, anger, and empathy. In the final model, preexisting child anxiety and maternal worry significantly explained 33% of the variance in children's self-reported fearful feelings.
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