Preoperative biliary drainage in perihilar cholangiocarcinoma: identifying patients who require percutaneous drainage after failed endoscopic drainage.

Background And Study Aims: Preoperative biliary drainage is often initiated with endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) in patients with potentially resectable perihilar cholangiocarcinoma (PHC), but additional percutaneous transhepatic catheter (PTC) drainage is frequently required. This study aimed to develop and validate a prediction model to identify patients with a high risk of inadequate ERCP drainage.

Patients And Methods: Patients with potentially resectable PHC and (attempted) preoperative ERCP drainage were included from two specialty center cohorts between 2001 and 2013.

Chemical exposures of women workers in the plastics industry with particular reference to breast cancer and reproductive hazards.

Despite concern about the harmful effects of substances contained in various plastic consumer products, little attention has focused on the more heavily exposed women working in the plastics industry. Through a review of the toxicology, industrial hygiene, and epidemiology literatures in conjunction with qualitative research, this article explores occupational exposures in producing plastics and health risks to workers, particularly women, who make up a large part of the workforce. The review demonstrates that workers are exposed to chemicals that have been identified as mammary carcinogens and endocrine disrupting chemicals, and that the work environment is heavily contaminated with dust and fumes.

Breast cancer risk in relation to occupations with exposure to carcinogens and endocrine disruptors: a Canadian case-control study.

Background: Endocrine disrupting chemicals and carcinogens, some of which may not yet have been classified as such, are present in many occupational environments and could increase breast cancer risk. Prior research has identified associations with breast cancer and work in agricultural and industrial settings. The purpose of this study was to further characterize possible links between breast cancer risk and occupation, particularly in farming and manufacturing, as well as to examine the impacts of early agricultural exposures, and exposure effects that are specific to the endocrine receptor status of tumours.

Haemodynamic characteristics of hypertension induced by prenatal cortisol exposure in sheep.

1. Administration of glucocorticoids to ewes early in pregnancy results in offspring with hypertension in adulthood. The hypertension in female offspring exposed to dexamethasone is associated with increased cardiac output, but whether this is also true in cortisol-exposed offspring is unknown.

Response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy does not predict overall survival for patients with synchronous colorectal hepatic metastases.

Objective: We investigated the relation between response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy and overall survival (OS) in patients with colorectal liver metastases (CLM).

Background: It has previously been reported that patients with synchronous CLM whose disease progresses while receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy or who do not receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy experience worse survival than patients whose disease responds to neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

Methods: By means of a prospectively maintained surgical database, between 1995 and 2003, we identified 111 patients with a synchronous CLM who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy before hepatic resection.