Direct observed procedural skills assessment in the undergraduate setting.

Background: Medical students are required to undertake procedural clinical skills training before they qualify as doctors, and an assessment of these skills is a critical element of their fitness to practice.

Context: Challenges facing educators include the logistics of observing: i.e.

Trends for in situ and invasive melanoma in Queensland, Australia, 1982-2002.

Objectives: Queensland, the north-eastern state of Australia, has the highest incidence of melanoma in the world. Control measures started earlier here than probably anywhere else in the world; early detection programmes started in the 1960s and primary prevention in the 1980s. Data from the population-based Queensland Cancer Registry therefore provide an internationally unique data source with which to assess trends for in situ and invasive melanomas and to consider the implications for early detection and primary prevention.

Adjuvant immunotherapy of patients with high-risk melanoma using vaccinia viral lysates of melanoma: results of a randomized trial.

Purpose: Patients with high-risk melanoma treated by immunotherapy with vaccinia viral lysates were found in phase II studies to have improved survival compared with historical controls. We therefore elected to test this therapy in a phase III study.

Patients And Methods: A prospective, randomized, multicenter trial to determine whether immunotherapy with a vaccine prepared from vaccinia melanoma cell lysates (VMCL) over a 2-year period after definitive surgery would improve relapse-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients with American Joint Committee on Cancer stage IIB and III melanoma compared with a control group treated only with surgery.