Locally Advanced Adenocarcinoma of the Esophagus: Is Esophagectomy Associated with Improved Overall Survival?

Background: Esophagectomy in locally advanced esophageal adenocarcinoma is challenging and carries risk. The value of esophagectomy in locally advanced esophageal adenocarcinoma is not well-defined.

Study Design: The National Cancer Database was used to identify patients with cT4 esophageal adenocarcinoma from 2004 to 2020.

Locally advanced pancreatic cancer: Is surgical palliation associated with improved clinical outcome relative to medical palliation?

Background: The value of palliative surgery in pancreatic cancer is not well-defined.

Methods: We queried the National Cancer Database for patients undergoing curative-intent resection, palliative surgery or medical palliation for clinical stage cT4N0-2M0 pancreatic cancer. Cohorts were 1:1:1 propensity-score-matched for comorbidities and stage.

A Computational Approach to Identifying Cultural Keywords Across Languages.

Distinctive aspects of a culture are often reflected in the meaning and usage of words in the language spoken by bearers of that culture. Keywords such as душа (soul) in Russian, hati (heart) in Indonesian and Malay, and gezellig (convivial/cosy/fun) in Dutch are held to be especially culturally revealing, and scholars have identified a number of such keywords using careful linguistic analyses (Peeters, 2020b; Wierzbicka, 1990). Because keywords are expected to have different statistical properties than related words in other languages, we argue that a quantitative comparison of word usage across languages can help to identify cultural keywords.

Does commission on cancer (CoC) accreditation mitigate the effect of care fragmentation on clinical outcome in localized rectal cancer?

Background: Studies of fragmented care (FC) in rectal cancer have not adjusted for indicators of hospital quality and may misrepresent the effects of FC.

Methods: We queried the National Cancer Database to identify patients undergoing care for clinical stage II and III rectal adenocarcinoma between 2006 and 2019. Those undergoing FC were sub-categorized based on whether (FC CoC) or not (FC non-CoC) they received systemic therapy at CoC accredited facilities.

Clinical stage T2N0M0 rectal adenocarcinoma: Is radical resection associated with improved overall survival in patients with low-risk histology?

Background: Prior studies evaluating the efficacy of local excision compared to radical resection in the treatment of rectal adenocarcinoma lacked sufficient power to identify differences in outcomes for patients with cT2 disease but low-risk histopathology. We compared the outcomes of local excision and radical resection for low-risk histopathology and high-risk histology of patients with cT2N0M0 rectal adenocarcinoma to assess their outcomes.

Methods: We queried the National Cancer Database for patients presenting with cT2N0M0 rectal adenocarcinoma between 2004 and 2019 and categorized them as low-risk histopathology or high-risk histology.