Pressure support improves oxygenation and lung protection compared to pressure-controlled ventilation and is further improved by random variation of pressure support.

Objectives: To explore whether 1) conventional pressure support ventilation improves lung function and attenuates the pulmonary inflammatory response compared to pressure-controlled ventilation and 2) random variation of pressure support levels (noisy pressure support ventilation) adds further beneficial effects to pressure support ventilation.

Design: Three-arm, randomized, experimental study.

Setting: University hospital research facility.

An increase in cell number at completion of therapy may develop as an indicator of early relapse: quantification of circulating epithelial tumor cells (CETC) for monitoring of adjuvant therapy in breast cancer.

Purpose: Treatment efficiency of adjuvant therapy in breast cancer is only revealed after several years by statistical evaluation and gives no answer for the individual patient. We here present a method to analyze the response to adjuvant chemotherapy online in individual patients.

Methods/results: In 25 consecutive non-metastatic primary breast cancer patients adjuvant fluorouracil/epirubicin/cyclophosphamid (FEC) or EC followed by taxane (EC-T) or cyclophosphamid/methotrexate/fluorouracil (CMF) therapy were given.

Quantification of circulating tumour cells for the monitoring of adjuvant therapy in breast cancer: an increase in cell number at completion of therapy is a predictor of early relapse.

Treatment efficiency of adjuvant therapy in breast cancer is revealed after several years by statistical evaluation, but this gives no answer for the individual patient. Having shown that circulating epithelial tumour cells (CETC) respond to neoadjuvant therapy in exactly the same way as the tumour, we monitored adjuvant therapy in 25 non-metastatic breast cancer patients. Nineteen patients with a decline or no change in number of CETC showed no relapse whereas six patients with a more than ten-fold increase had five distant and one local relapse, indicating that the dynamic of CETC in the individual patient is predictive of outcome.