Representativeness of trial participants: linking the EORTC boost-no boost trial to the Netherlands cancer registry.

Background And Objectives: To evaluate the representativeness of Dutch patients participating in the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer EORTC boost-no-boost trial to the target breast cancer patient population.

Methods: All female breast cancer patients diagnosed between 1989 and 1996, aged ≤70 years, treated with breast-conserving surgery and radiation therapy, were selected from the Netherlands Cancer Registry (NCR) and linked to the EORTC trial database. Baseline characteristics were compared between trial and non-trial participants, for the Dutch population and according to seven participating institutions.

Differences in Treatment and Outcome After Treatment with Curative Intent in the Screening and Control Arms of the ERSPC Rotterdam.

Unlabelled: Screening for prostate cancer (PCa) results in a favorable stage shift. However, even if screening did not result in a clinically apparent lower stage or grade, it might still lead to less disease recurrence after treatment with curative intent (radical prostatectomy [RP] and radiation therapy [RT]) because the tumor had less time to develop outside the prostate. The outcome after treatment could also differ because of variations in treatment quality (eg, radiation dosage/adjuvant hormonal therapy).

Stratification based on methylation of TBX2 and TBX3 into three molecular grades predicts progression in patients with pTa-bladder cancer.

The potential risk of recurrence and progression in patients with non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer necessitates followup by cystoscopy. The risk of progression to muscle-invasive bladder cancer is estimated based on the European Organisation of Research and Treatment of Cancer score, a combination of several clinicopathological variables. However, pathological assessment is not objective and reproducibility is insufficient.

Fertility potential in a cohort of 65 men with previously acquired undescended testes.

Purpose: To evaluate testicular function in men with previously acquired undescended testes (AUDT) in whom spontaneous descent was awaited until puberty followed by orchiopexy in case of nondescent.

Methods: Andrological evaluation including paternity, scrotal ultrasound, reproductive hormones, and semen analysis was performed in three groups: men with AUDT, healthy controls, and men with previously congenital undescended testes (CUDT).

Results: In comparison with controls, men with AUDT more often had significantly abnormal testicular consistency, smaller testes, lower sperm concentration, and less motile sperm.

A different method of evaluation of the ERSPC trial confirms that prostate-specific antigen testing has a significant impact on prostate cancer mortality.

The advantages and disadvantages of two different methods of analyzing the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) trial with respect to the effect of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening on prostate cancer (PCa) mortality (ie, disease-specific mortality analysis and excess mortality analysis) are discussed in depth. The traditional disease-specific mortality is the best end point, but it could be biased by misclassification of causes of death, and it does not take into account the possible effect of the screening process on other causes of death. Excess mortality analysis overcomes these problems, but the results could be biased if the expected mortality is not corrected for attendance status.