3115453]”
“Objective: An American Psychosocial Oncology Society workgroup has developed indicators of the quality of psychosocial care that can be measured through review of medical records. The present report describes the first large-scale use of these indicators to evaluate psychosocial care in outpatient medical oncology settings.
Methods: Medical records of 1660 colorectal, breast and non-small cell cancer patients first seen by a medical oncologist in 2006 at 11 practice sites in Florida were reviewed for performance on indicators of the quality of psychosocial care.
Results: Assessment of
emotional well-being was significantly less likely to be documented than assessment of pain (52 selleck chemicals llc vs 87%, p<0.001). A problem with emotional well-being was documented in 13% of records and evidence of action taken was documented in 58% of these records. Ten of eleven practice
sites performed below an 85% threshold on each indicator of psychosocial care. Variability in assessment of emotional-well being was associated (p<0.02) with practice site and patient gender selleck compound and age while variability in assessment of pain was associated (p<0.001) with practice site and cancer type.
Conclusions: Findings illustrate how use of the psychosocial care indicators permits identification of specific practice sites and processes of care that should be targeted for quality improvement efforts. Additionally, findings demonstrate the extent to which routine assessment of emotional well-being lags behind routine assessment of pain in cancer patients. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.”
“Purpose: Molecular features of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in never-smokers are not well recognized. We assessed the expression of genes potentially related to lung cancer etiology in smoking vs. never-smoking NSCLC patients.
Methods: We assayed frozen tumor samples from surgically learn more resected 31 never-smoking and 54 clinically pair-matched smoking NSCLC patients, and from corresponding normal lung tissue from 27 and 43 patients,
respectively. Expression of 21 genes, including cell membrane kinases, sex hormone receptors, transcription factors, growth factors and others was assessed by reverse transcription – quantitative PCR.
Results: Expression of 5 genes was significantly higher in tumors of non-smokers vs. smokers: CSF1R (p<0.0001), RRAD (p<0.0001), PR (p=0.0004), TGFBR2 (p=0.0027) and EPHB6 (p=0.0033). Expression of AKR1B10 (p<0.0001), CDKN2A (p<0.0001), CHRNA6 (p<0.0001), SOX9 (p<0.0001), survivin (p<0.0001) and ER2 (p=0.002) was significantly higher in tumors compared to normal lung tissue. Expression of AR (p<0.0001), EPHB6 (p<0.0001), PR (p<0.0001), TGFBR2 (p<0.0001), TGFBR3 (p<0.0001), ER1 (p=0.0006) and DLG1 (p=0.0016) was significantly lower in tumors than in normal lung tissue. Expression of IGF2 was higher in tumors than in healthy lung tissue in never-smokers (p=0.003), and expression of AHR (p<0.