[This corrects the article DOI: 10.2196/48852.].
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Adherence to oral anticancer treatments is critical in the disease trajectory of patients with breast cancer. Given the impact of nonadherence on clinical outcomes and the associated economic burden for the health care system, finding ways to increase treatment adherence is particularly relevant.
Objective: The primary end point is to evaluate the effectiveness of a decision support system (DSS) and a machine learning web application in promoting adherence to oral anticancer treatments among patients with metastatic breast cancer.
Background: Emerging Technologies (ETs) have recently acquired great relevance in elderly care. The exceptional experience with SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has emphasized the usefulness of ETs in the assistance and remote monitoring of older adults. Technological devices have also contributed to the preservation of social interactions, thus reducing isolation and loneliness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Caregivers may play a fundamental role in the clinical pathway of cancer patients. They provide emotional, informational, and functional support as well as practical assistance, and they might help mediate the interaction and communication with the oncologists when care options are discussed, or decisions are made. Little is known about the impact of dyadic dynamics on patient-doctor communication, patient's satisfaction, or adherence to the therapies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Despite the continued progress of medicine, dealing with breast cancer is becoming a major socioeconomic challenge, particularly due to its increasing incidence. The ability to better manage and adapt to the entire care process depends not only on the type of cancer but also on the patient's sociodemographic and psychological characteristics as well as on the social environment in which a person lives and interacts. Therefore, it is important to understand which factors may contribute to successful adaptation to breast cancer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe history of human-subject experimentation has shown the need for safeguards to protect participants from abuse. Balancing participant protection with adequate representation of the adult intellectual disability population in research presents an important challenge. Our study aimed to analyze guidance on the appropriate inclusion of adults with intellectual disability who are or are not able to consent to biomedical research participation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Vulnerability is a key concept in traditional and contemporary bioethics. In the philosophical literature, vulnerability is understood not only to be an ontological condition of humanity, but also to be a consequence of contingent factors. Within bioethics debates, vulnerable populations are defined in relation to compromised capacity to consent, increased susceptibility to harm, and/or exploitation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Clinical Ethics Support Services (CESS) have been established to support healthcare professionals in addressing ethically sensitive issues in clinical practice and, in many countries, they are under development. In the context of growing CESS, exploring how healthcare professionals experience and address clinical ethics issues in their daily practice represents a fundamental step to understand their potential needs. This is even more relevant in the context of extremely sensitive diseases, such as cancer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn recent years, virtual reality (VR) has been effectively employed in several settings, ranging from health care needs to leisure and gaming activities. A new application of virtual stimuli appeared in social media: in the documentary 'I met you' from the South-Korean Munhwa Broadcasting, a mother made the experience of interacting with the avatar of the seven-year-old daughter, who died four years before. We think that this new application of virtual stimuli should open a debate on its possible implications: it represents contents related to grief, a dramatic and yet natural experience, that can have deep psychological impacts on fragile subjects put in virtual environments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClinical Ethics Committees (CECs), as distinct from Research Ethics Committees, were originally established with the aim of supporting healthcare professionals in managing controversial clinical ethical issues. However, it is still unclear whether they manage to accomplish this task and what is their impact on clinical practice. This systematic review aims to collect available assessments of CECs' performance as reported in literature, in order to evaluate CECs' effectiveness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe fight against doping in sport is internationally coordinated by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Through its World Anti-Doping Code, WADA aims to harmonize anti-doping policies, rules and regulations. One key reference document bound to the Code is the International Standard for Laboratories (ISL), which mainly specifies the criteria that must be met for laboratory accreditation, as well as standards to adopt for the production of valid test results and evidentiary data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe World Anti-Doping Agency is the international body coordinating anti-doping efforts, with the mandate of harmonizing anti-doping policy worldwide. With novel performance-enhancing compounds continuously entering the market, research is necessary to develop appropriate methods for their detection. WADA-accredited laboratories are required to spend 7% of their annual budget on this research and need to obtain ethics approval for studies involving human participants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTraditional Informed Consent is becoming increasingly inadequate, especially in the context of research biobanks. How much information is needed by patients for their consent to be truly informed? How does the quality of the information they receive match up to the quality of the information they ought to receive? How can information be conveyed fairly about future, non-predictable lines of research? To circumvent these difficulties, some scholars have proposed that current consent guidelines should be reassessed, with trust being used as a guiding principle instead of information. Here, we analyse one of these proposals, based on a Participation Pact, which is already being offered to patients at the Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, a comprehensive cancer hospital in Milan, Italy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Assist Reprod Genet
August 2015
Purpose: This article offers physicians a tool for structured ethical reflection on challenging situations surrounding oocyte cryopreservation in young healthy women.
Methods: A systematic literature review offers a comprehensive overview of the ethical debate surrounding the practice. Ethical Counseling Methodology (ECM) offers a practical approach for addressing ethical uncertainties.
We explored the comprehension of the informed consent in 77 cancer patients previously enrolled in randomised phase II or phase III clinical trials, between March and July 2011, at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milano. We asked participants to complete an ad hoc questionnaire and analysed their answers. Sixty-two per cent of the patients understood the purpose and nature of the trial they were participating in; 44% understood the study procedures and 40% correctly listed at least one of the major risks or complications related to their participation in the trial.
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