Publications by authors named "Olafsdottir E"

Purpose: To analyse graft detachment rates after Descemet stripping automated endothelial keratoplasty (DSAEK) using surgeon-cut grafts and pre-cut grafts transported in different mediums.

Methods: A retrospective study of graft detachment rates including 265 surgeries (240 patients) performed between 2019 and 2023. The DSAEK grafts were either surgeon-cut (n = 135) or pre-cut and transported in a dextran-containing medium (n = 82) or in a dextran-free medium (n = 48).

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  • A recent study found that cognitive behavioral therapy for symptom preoccupation related to paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF-CBT) improved quality of life but its effects on physiological factors like heart rate variability (HRV), physical activity, and sleep were unclear.
  • In the study, 127 patients were divided into two groups, one receiving AF-CBT and the other AF education for 10 weeks, with assessments conducted before, after treatment, and at three months.
  • Results showed that while AF-CBT significantly reduced insomnia severity, it did not affect heart rate variability, physical activity levels, or overall sleep duration, suggesting the therapy's benefits may be more psychological than physiological.
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Purpose: This study reports clinical outcomes up to 6 years after Descemet's membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK) performed at the Department of Ophthalmology, Örebro University Hospital, Örebro, Sweden.

Methods: The study has a cross-sectional and case series design. Inclusion criteria were all DMEK-operated eyes during 2013-2018 until repeat keratoplasty.

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Introduction: A large increase in new cancer cases is predicted worldwide, due to population growth, ageing and increased cancer risk. The age distribution of the Icelandic population is different from the other Nordic countries. The purpose of this study was to predict the number of new cancer cases in Iceland and other Nordic countries, and cancer survivors in Iceland, up to the year 2040.

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Introduction: The Icelandic Cancer Registry (ICR) was founded seventy years ago by the Icelandic Cancer Society. In 2007 the ICR became one of the health registers of the Directorate of Health. In this paper we present cancer incidence, mortality, and survival in Iceland over 70 years.

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  • The study aimed to assess if improvements in lung cancer survival from 1990 to 2016 were consistent across different age groups and cancer types in Nordic countries.
  • Data from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden was analyzed, showing continuous improvements in both 1- and 5-year relative survival rates for lung cancer across all demographics and subtypes, with Denmark seeing the most significant improvements.
  • Despite these advancements, lung cancer survival rates are still low, with around 75% of patients dying within five years of diagnosis.
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Background And Purpose: Stage at cancer diagnosis is an important predictor of cancer survival. TNM stage is constructed for anatomic solid cancer diagnoses from tumor size (T), nodal spread (N) and distant metastasis (M) and categorized in groups 0-I, II, II and IV. TNM stage is imperative in cancer diagnosis, management and control, and of high value in cancer surveillance, for example, monitoring of stage distributions.

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Background: Premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) are a common cardiac condition often associated with disabling symptoms and impaired quality of life (QoL). Current treatment strategies have limited effectiveness in reducing symptoms and restoring QoL for patients with PVCs. Symptom preoccupation, involving cardiac-related fear, hypervigilance, and avoidance behavior, is associated with disability in other cardiac conditions and can be effectively targeted by cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

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Background: Since the early 2000s, overall and site-specific cancer survival have improved substantially in the Nordic countries. We evaluated whether the improvements have been similar across countries, major cancer types, and age groups.

Material And Methods: Using population-based data from the five Nordic cancer registries recorded in the NORDCAN database, we included a cohort of 1,525,854 men and 1,378,470 women diagnosed with cancer (except non-melanoma skin cancer) during 2002-2021, and followed for death until 2021.

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Background: The survival in patients diagnosed with cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) has improved in the Nordic countries in the last decades. It is of interest to know if these improvements are observed in all ages and for both women and men.

Methods: Patients diagnosed with CMM in the Nordic countries in 1990-2016 were identified in the NORDCAN database.

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Estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer generally confers a more favorable prognosis than ER-negative cancer, however, a different picture is emerging for BRCA2 mutation carriers and young patients. We used nationwide data from population-based registries to study prognostic effects in those two groups. Of all 2817 eligible women diagnosed with breast cancer in Iceland during 1980-2004, 85% had been tested for the Icelandic 999del5 BRCA2 (c.

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Introduction: Worldwide, the health-promoting effects of breastfeeding on children and their mothers are indisputable. The frequency and duration of breastfeeding varies greatly internationally but studies on prevalence and influencing factors of breastfeeding in Iceland are scanty and the published ones deal with small groups. The aim of this research is to describe the epidemiology of breastfeeding duration and its influencing factors in Iceland among a large cohort in a whole population over almost one century.

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  • Keratinocyte carcinoma (KC) is the most common type of skin cancer, but its effects on survival aren't well understood.
  • This study looked at how two types of KC, basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), affect survival in people from Iceland.
  • The results showed that BCC usually doesn't affect survival much, but SCC can be more dangerous, especially for younger people under 50.
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Aim Of The Article: We present our new GDPR-compliant federated analysis programme (nordcan.R), how it is used to compute statistics for the Nordic cancer statistics web platform NORDCAN, and demonstrate that it works also with non-Nordic data.

Materials And Methods: We chose R and Stata programming languages for writing nordcan.

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  • A study examined the risks of cancer patients testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 and experiencing severe COVID-19 compared to the general population in Norway, Denmark, and Iceland from March to December 2020.
  • Cancer patients in Norway and Denmark faced a higher risk of testing positive and having severe COVID-19 outcomes, especially those recently treated or diagnosed with specific cancers, like haematologic malignancies, colorectal, or lung cancer.
  • In contrast, Icelandic cancer patients did not show an increased risk for testing positive, but overall, the increased risks for severe outcomes persisted for cancer patients throughout 2020.
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Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is often associated with troubling symptoms leading to impaired quality of life (QoL) and high health care use. Symptom preoccupation, that is, fear of cardiac-related symptoms and avoidance behavior, potentially contributes to disability in AF but is not targeted by current interventions.

Objectives: We sought to evaluate the effect of online cognitive behavior therapy (AF-CBT) on QoL in patients with symptomatic paroxysmal AF.

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The fungal mitochondrial small subunit (mtSSU) ribosomal DNA is one of the most commonly used loci for phylogenetic analysis of lichen-forming fungi, but their primer specificity to mycobionts has not been evaluated. The current study aimed to design mycobiont-specific mtSSU primers and highlights their utility with an example from the saxicolous lichen-forming fungal genus Essl. in Iceland.

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  • The study examines the impact of incomplete TNM staging (which includes tumor size, nodal spread, and distant metastasis) on cancer survival rates in patients from Nordic countries diagnosed between 2014-2016.* -
  • By evaluating different approaches to recode missing N and M data as N0 and M0, the study found that this assumption increased the percentage of cases with available TNM stage but did not significantly affect one-year relative survival rates.* -
  • The researchers concluded that while complete TNM information is preferred, assuming N0M0 for missing data could be justifiable in future studies, though careful consideration of regional variations in data reporting is necessary.*
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Background: A recent overview of cancer survival trends 1990-2016 in the Nordic countries reported continued improvements in age-standardized breast cancer survival among women. The aim was to estimate age-specific survival trends over calendar time, including life-years lost, to evaluate if improvements have benefited patients across all ages in the Nordic countries.

Methods: Data on breast cancers diagnosed 1990-2016 in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden were obtained from the NORDCAN database.

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Background: Survival of patients with colon and rectal cancer has improved in all Nordic countries during the past decades. The aim of this study was to further assess survival trends in patients with colon and rectal cancer in the Nordic countries by age at diagnosis and to present additional survival measures.

Methods: Data on colon and rectal cancer cases diagnosed in the Nordic countries between 1990 and 2016 were obtained from the NORDCAN database.

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Usnic acid is an antibiotic metabolite produced by a wide variety of lichenized fungal lineages. The enantiomers of usnic acid have been shown to display contrasting bioactivities, and hence it is important to determine their spatial distribution, amounts and enantiomeric ratios in lichens to understand their roles in nature and grasp their pharmaceutical potential. The overall aim of the study was to characterise the spatial distribution of the predominant usnic acid enantiomer in lichens by combining spatial imaging and chiral chromatography.

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In this article the incidence and mortality for cancer of the colon and rectum in Iceland is discussed. The two most common screening methods, faecal immunochemical test (FIT) and colonoscopy are compared and an estimate of cost and benefits for the Icelandic society will be made. The incidence of cancer of the colon and rectum has been increasing in Iceland in last decades but mortality has decreased and survival improved.

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Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia in the adult population. AF is associated with a poor quality of life (QoL) and, in many patients, current medical treatments are inadequate in alleviating AF symptoms (eg, palpitations). Patients often present with symptom preoccupation in terms of symptom fear, avoidance, and control behaviors.

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Background: The worldwide incidence of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) is increasing.

Objectives: To evaluate the tumour burden of in situ and invasive cSCC in Iceland, where the population is exposed to limited ultraviolet radiation.

Methods: This whole-population study used the Icelandic Cancer Registry, which contains records of all in situ and invasive cSCC cases from 1981 to 2017.

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