Can Assoc Radiol J
January 2025
The Canadian Association of Radiologists (CAR) Cancer Expert Panel is made up of physicians from the disciplines of radiology, medical oncology, surgical oncology, radiation oncology, family medicine/general practitioner oncology, a patient advisor, and an epidemiologist/guideline methodologist. The Expert Panel developed a list of 29 clinical/diagnostic scenarios, of which 16 pointed to other CAR guidelines. A rapid scoping review was undertaken to identify systematically produced referral guidelines that provide recommendations for one or more of the remaining 13 scenarios.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Calls have been made for paramedics to have some form of care pathway that they could use to safely divert adults with epilepsy away from emergency departments and instigate ambulatory care improvements. Different configurations are possible. To know which to prioritise for implementation/evaluation, there is a need to determine which are acceptable to service users and likely National Health Service-feasible.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContext: In the context of iterative feedback loops to support real-time policy decision making, and an emphasis on speeding up adoption of evidence-based interventions, qualitative healthcare researchers are increasingly expected to produce rapid results and products. Traditional qualitative methods have been adapted for this purpose.
Objective: To develop and apply a rapid analysis framework in a process evaluation for the VICTORION-Spirit study; a ground-breaking hybrid trial examining real-world delivery of inclisiran-a cholesterol-lowering treatment-in primary care.
Background: In 2017, the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, a Canadian federally sponsored organisation, initiated a national multijurisdictional quality improvement (QI) initiative to maximise the use of synoptic data to drive cancer system improvements, known as the Evidence for Surgical Synoptic Quality Improvement Programme. The goal of our study was to evaluate the outcomes, determinants and learning of this nationally led initiative across six jurisdictions in Canada, integrating a mix of cancer surgery disease sites and clinicians.
Methods: A mixed-methods evaluation (surveys, semistructured interviews and focus groups) of this initiative was focused on the ability of each jurisdiction to use synoptic reporting data to successfully implement and sustain QI projects to beyond the completion of the initiative and the lessons learnt in the process.
Introduction: To identify service users' preferences for an alternative care pathway for adults with epilepsy presenting to the ambulance service.
Methods: Extensive formative work (qualitative, survey and knowledge exchange) informed the design of a stated preference discrete choice experiment (DCE). This hypothetical survey was hosted online and consisted of 12 binary choices of alternative care pathways described in terms of: the paramedic's access to medical records/ 'care plan', what happens next (described in terms of conveyance), time, availability of epilepsy specialists today, general practitioner (GP) notification and future contact with epilepsy specialists.
Introduction: Adults presenting to the ambulance service for diagnosed epilepsy are often transported to emergency departments (EDs) despite no clinical need. An alternative care pathway (CP) could allow paramedics to divert them from ED and instigate ambulatory care improvements. To identify the most promising CP configuration for subsequent testing, the COLLABORATE project surveyed people with epilepsy and family/friends who had recently used the English ambulance service to elicit preferences for 288 CP configurations for different seizures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is an aggressive cutaneous neuroendocrine carcinoma. Due to its relatively low incidence and limited prospective trials, current recommendations are guided by historical single-institution retrospective studies.
Objective: To evaluate the overall survival (OS) of patients in Canada with head and neck MCC (HNMCC) according to American Joint Committee on Cancer 8th edition staging and treatment modalities.
Light-rechargeable photobatteries have emerged as an elegant solution to address the intermittency of solar irradiation by harvesting and storing solar energy directly through a battery electrode. Recently, a number of compact two-electrode photobatteries have been proposed, showing increases in capacity and open-circuit voltage upon illumination. Here, we analyze the thermal contributions to this increase in capacity under galvanostatic and photocharging conditions in two promising photoactive cathode materials, VO and LiMnO.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding (de)lithiation heterogeneities in battery materials is key to ensure optimal electrochemical performance. However, this remains challenging due to the three-dimensional morphology of electrode particles, the involvement of both solid- and liquid-phase reactants and a range of relevant timescales (seconds to hours). Here we overcome this problem and demonstrate the use of confocal microscopy for the simultaneous three-dimensional operando measurement of lithium-ion dynamics in individual agglomerate particles, and the electrolyte in batteries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhotobatteries, batteries with a light-sensitive electrode, have recently been proposed as a way of simultaneously capturing and storing solar energy in a single device. Despite reports of photocharging with multiple different electrode materials, the overall mechanism of operation remains poorly understood. Here, we use optical reflection microscopy to investigate light-induced charging in LiVO electrodes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDoping halide perovskites (HPs) with extrinsic species, such as alkali metal ions, plays a critical, albeit often elusive role in optimising optoelectronic devices. Here, we use solid state lithium ion battery inspired devices with a polyethylene oxide-based polymer electrolyte to dope HPs controllably with lithium ions. We perform a suite of material analysis techniques while dynamically varying Li doping concentrations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAmong surgical residents, research is often perceived as a check-mark exercise. Focus then turns to studying for exams and honing skills for independent practice. While some residents are passionate about research and enroll in other formalized training, pragmatists argue that not every surgeon should engage in research at this level.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFControlled doping of halide perovskites is a longstanding challenge for efficient optoelectronic applications. Here, a solid-state lithium-ion battery (LIB) inspired device is used as a method of extrinsically doping a halide perovskite in a controlled and measurable fashion. The Burstein-Moss band gap shift induced by the electronic doping is measured using optical spectroscopy to monitor the fraction of injected charges that successfully n-type dope the perovskite.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Understanding patient and health practitioner perspectives on clinical trials can inform opportunities to enhance trial conduct and design, and therefore patient experience. Patients with haematological cancers have faced additional risk and uncertainty during the pandemic but it is unclear how they and practitioners have experienced cancer trials during this period. In the context of a haemato-oncology trial (PETReA), we compared patient and practitioner views and experiences of PETReA before and during COVID-19.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGastric signet-ring-cell adenocarcinoma (SRCC) is a rare disease entity, often characterized by early age of the onset and sometimes attributable to heritable genetic mutations. Overall prognosis is usually poor due to diagnosis at late stages. There are a handful of case reports that describe patient presentation with retroperitoneal fibrosis secondary to malignancy from a concurrent gastric SRCC found on the workup.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Moving toward a funding standard similar to that for clinical services for roles essential to the functioning of education, research and leadership services within divisions of general surgery is necessary to strengthen divisional resilience. We aimed to identify roles and underlying tasks in these services central to sustainable functioning of Canadian academic divisions of general surgery.
Methods: Between June 2018 and October 2020, we used a 4-step modified Delphi method (online survey, face-to-face nominal group technique [ = 12], semistructured telephone interview [ = 8] and nominal group technique [ = 12]) to achieve national consensus from an expert panel of all 17 heads of academic divisions of general surgery in Canada on the roles and accompanying tasks essential to education, research and leadership services within an academic division of general surgery.
Hereditary diffuse gastric cancer (HDGC) is a rare signet-ring cell adenocarcinoma (SRCC) linked to (E-cadherin) inactivating germline mutations, and increasingly other gene mutations. Female mutation carriers have additional risk of lobular breast cancer. Risk management includes prophylactic total gastrectomy (PTG).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: To explore the introduction of an evidence-based information intervention - the 'Caring for Someone with Cancer' booklet - within home care and end-of-life care, to inform future implementation and practice development within this setting.
Background: Family carers' contribution is crucial to enable care and death of people at home. The 'Caring for Someone with Cancer' booklet received positive responses from family carers and District Nurses and is an evidence-based intervention designed to support carers to deliver basic nursing tasks.
Mucinous (colloid) adenocarcinomas (MAs) are a rare histological subtype of adenocarcinomas where extracellular mucin comprises more than 50% of the tumor. Most literature on MAs relate to cancers from colorectal and breast sites; however, the literature lacks a standardized overview of the MA disease entity. Particularly in colorectal cancer, some MAs may have signet ring cells floating within the mucin, which may represent a highly metastatic phenotype.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOff-grid energy storage devices are becoming increasingly important to power distributed applications, such as the Internet of things, and smart city ubiquitous sensor systems. To date, this has been achieved by combining an energy storage device, e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSignet ring cell adenocarcinomas (SRCCs) are a rare histological subtype of adenocarcinomas with a poor prognosis, typically due to advanced disease at diagnosis. A signet ring cell, mimicking its moniker, contains abundant intracytoplasmic mucin that pushes the nucleus to the periphery. In these cancers, this cell feature comprises more than 50% of the tumor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Epilepsy is associated with costly unplanned health service use. The UK's National Audits of Seizure Management in Hospital found use was often clinically unnecessary, avoidable and typically led to little benefit for epilepsy management. We systematically identified how services have responded to reduce such use.
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