Personal comorbidities and their subsequent risks for liver,gallbladder and bile duct cancers

Many environmental risk factors for hepatobiliary cancers are known but whether they are associated with specific cancer types is unclear. We present here a novel approach of assessing standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) of previously diagnosed comorbidities for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), gallbladder cancer (GBC), cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) and ampullary cancer. The 13 comorbidities included alcohol and nonalcohol related liver disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, gallstone disease, viral and other kinds of hepatitis, infection of bile ducts, hepatic and other autoimmune diseases, obesity and diabetes. Patients were identified from the Swedish Inpatient Register from 1987 to 2018, and their cancers were followed from 1997 onwards. SIRs for HCC were 80 to 100 in men and women diagnosed with hepatitis C virus and they were also >10 in patients diagnosed with hepatitis B virus, other kind of hepatitis, hepatic autoimmune disease and nonalcohol related liver disease. Many of these risks, as well as alcohol related liver disease, were either specific to HCC or were shared with intrahepatic CCA. For GBC, CCA and ampullary cancer infection of bile ducts was the main risk factor. Gallstone disease, nonhepatic autoimmune diseases and diabetes were associated with all hepatobiliary cancers. The limitations of the study include inability to cover some rare risk factors and limited follow-up time. Many of the considered comorbidities are characterized by chronic inflammation and/or overt immune disturbance in autoimmune diseases. The results suggest that local chronic inflammation and a related immune disturbance is the carcinogenic trigger for all these cancers.     

Incidence,causes, and management of failed awake fibreoptic intubation—A retrospective study of 833 procedures

Awake fibreoptic intubation has been considered a gold standard in the management of the difficult airway. However, failure may cause critical situations. The aim of this study was to investigate the incidence and causes of failed awake fibreoptic intubation at a tertiary care hospital. The study was conducted at St. Olav University Hospital in Trondheim, Norway. Problems occurring during anaesthesia are routinely recorded in the electronic anaesthesia information system (Picis Clinical Solutions Inc.), including difficult intubations. We applied text search on all anaesthesia records between 2011 and 2021 and identified 833 awake fibreoptic intubations. The anaesthesia records were examined to identify failed awake fibreoptic intubations, the cause of failure and how the airway ultimately was secured. Among 233,938 patients who received anaesthesia, 90,397 received tracheal intubation and 833 received awake fibreoptic intubation. Twenty-nine of the procedures failed. In nine patients the failure caused loss of airway control with desaturation and hypoventilation. The major causes of failure were dislodged tube after induction of general anaesthesia (n = 8), patient distress (n = 5), tube not able to pass (n = 5), and airway bleeding (n = 3). The situations were primarily solved using direct laryngoscopy, with or without bougie, or with video laryngoscopy. Tracheostomy was performed in four patients. Awake fibreoptic intubation failed in 3.5% of patients, most often due to dislocation, problems passing the tracheal tube, or patient discomfort. The failure rate was higher than in previous studies.     

Risk as a pattern over time: Delineation of time-dependent risk factors in biological,psychological, and social variables in cancer patients

Background

Survival in cancer patients is associated with a multitude of biological, social, and psychological factors. Although it is well established that all these factors add to overall mortality, it is not well understood how the predictive power of these parameters changes in a comprehensive model and over time.

Methods

Patients who attended the authors’ outpatient clinic were invited to participate. The authors followed 5180 mixed cancer patients (51.1% female; mean age, 59.1 years [SD = 13.8]) for up to 16 years and analyzed biological (age, sex, cancer site, anemia), psychological (anxiety, depression), and social variables (marital status, education, employment status) potentially predicting overall survival in a Cox proportional hazards model.

Results

The median survival time for the entire sample was 4.3 years (95% confidence interval, 4.0–4.7). The overall survival probabilities for 1 and 10 years were 76.8% and 38.0%, respectively. Following an empirical approach, the authors split the time interval into five periods: acute, subacute, short-term, medium-term, and long-term. A complex pattern of variables predicted overall survival differently in the five periods. Biological parameters were important throughout most of the time, social parameters were either time-independent predictors or tended to be more important in the longer term. Of the psychological parameters, only depression was a significant predictor and lost its predictive power in the long-term.

Conclusions

The findings of this study allow the development of comprehensive patient-specific models of risk and resilience factors addressing biopsychosocial needs of cancer patients, paving the way for a personalized treatment plan that goes beyond biomedical cancer care.     

Contribution of cost to treatment nonadherence in the US breast cancer survivors: a population-based analysis

Breast Cancer Research and Treatment - Breast cancer survivors are often prescribed medications for at least 5 years to reduce recurrence risk, yet some forego this treatment due to cost....