Development of EASY-Care, for brief standardized assessment of the health and care needs of older people; with latest information about cross-national acceptability.

Introduction: The EASY-Care system has been developed in the past 20 years in the United States and Europe as a brief standardized method for assessing the perceptions of older people about their health and care needs and priorities for a service response. More recently, it has been adapted and tested for use in poor, middle-income, and rich countries across the world. In this article we review its development and report the latest data for cross-cultural acceptability to older people and their clinicians in 6 countries across 4 continents.

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy with or without zoledronic acid in early breast cancer--a randomized biomarker pilot study.

Purpose: To investigate the short-term biologic effects of neoadjuvant chemotherapy +/- zoledronic acid (ZOL) in invasive breast cancer.

Experimental Design: Forty patients were randomized to receive a single 4 mg infusion of ZOL 24 hours after the first cycle of FE100C chemotherapy, or chemotherapy alone. Randomization was stratified for tumor stage, ER, HER2, and menopausal status.