Concordance in the Assessment of Effectiveness of Palliative Care between Patients and Palliative Care Nurses in Malaysia: A Study with the Palliative Care Outcome Scale.

Context: The Palliative Care Outcome Scale (POS) is an easy-to-use assessment tool to evaluate the effectiveness of palliative care. There is no published literature on the use of POS as an assessment tool in Malaysia.

Aim: To define the concordance in the assessment of quality of life between patients with advanced cancers and their palliative care nurses using a Malay version of the POS.

Cutaneous metastases from head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

The presence of cutaneous metastases in squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck (SCCHN) is rare and associated with a dismal prognosis. It is vital to distinguish these lesions from direct invasion of the skin by SCCHN or primary cutaneous malignancies as the prognosis is vastly different and so is the management. In this case report, we present four cases of cutaneous metastases and also briefly review the literature pertaining to this phenomenon.

Tracheobronchial amyloidosis: utilization of radiotherapy as a treatment modality.

Tracheobronchial amyloidosis (TBA) is a rare disease. No general consensus exists with regard to its optimal treatment, resulting in a variety of modalities used to manage this condition. In this article, we present a case of TBA treated with external beam radiation therapy with encouraging results.