Creating a culture for change: Lessons from behavioral economics and complexity science to increase serious illness conversations for patients with cancer.

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.

Trainee-Led Quality Improvement Project to Improve Fertility Preservation Counseling for Patients With Cancer.

Purpose: Oncofertility counseling regarding the reproductive risks associated with cancer therapy is essential for quality cancer care. We aimed to increase the rate of oncofertility counseling for patients of reproductive age (18-40 years) with cancer who were initiating systemic therapy at the Johns Hopkins Cancer Center from a baseline rate of 37% (25 of 68, June 2019-January 2020) to 70% by February 2021.

Methods: We formed an interprofessional, multidisciplinary team as part of the ASCO Quality Training Program.

Incorporating palliative care into oncology practice: why and how.

The provision of specialty palliative care alongside oncology care is now recommended by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) on the basis of multiple randomized trials showing that it leads to better symptom control, less depression and anxiety, improved quality of life, improved caregiver quality of life, and even longer survival. That said, simply not enough palliative care specialists are available to provide concurrent care, so oncologists are tasked with providing the greatest part of primary palliative care. It is useful to think of primary palliative care as comprising 2 skill sets, or "bundles": the first symptom assessment and management, and the second communication.

Long-term Cost Utility of Spinal Cord Stimulation in Patients with Failed Back Surgery Syndrome.

Background: Failed back surgery syndrome (FBSS) is a cause of significant morbidity for up to 40% of patients following spine surgery, and is estimated to cost almost $20 billion. Treatment options for these patients currently include conventional medical management (CMM), repeat operation, or spinal cord stimulation (SCS). Much of the published data regarding cost effectiveness of SCS comprise smaller scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) rather than large databases capturing practices throughout the US.

Control of the interface between heterotypic cell populations reveals the mechanism of intercellular transfer of signaling proteins.

Direct intercellular transfer of cellular components is a recently described general mechanism of cell–cell communication. It is a more non-specific mode of intercellular communication that is not actively controlled by the participating cells. Though membrane bound proteins and small non-protein cytosolic components have been shown to be transferred between cells, the possibility of transfer of cytosolic proteins has not been clearly established, and its mechanism remains unexplained.