Plos One
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Although a wide range of needs assessment tools for cancer patients have been developed, no standardized and commonly accepted instruments were recommended to use in clinical care. This systematic review was conducted to assess the quality of psychometric properties of needs assessment tools among cancer patients in order to help oncology healthcare professionals select the most appropriate needs assessment tools in routine clinical practice. ⋯ Despite several needs assessment tools exist to assess care needs in cancer patients, further improvement of already existing and promising instruments is recommended.
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Tobacco smoking is often more prevalent among those with lower socio-economic status (SES) in high-income countries, which can be driven by the inequalities in initiation and cessation of smoking. Smoking is a leading contributor to socio-economic disparities in health. To date, the evidence for any socio-economic inequality in smoking cessation is lacking, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This study examined the association between cessation behaviours and SES of smokers from eight LMICs. ⋯ Lack of clear evidence of the impact of lower SES on adult cessation behaviour in LMICs suggests that lower-SES smokers are not less successful in their attempts to quit than their higher-SES counterparts. Specifically, lack of employment, which is indicative of younger age and lower nicotine dependence for students, or lower personal disposable income and lower affordability for the unemployed and the retirees, may be associated with quitting. Raising taxes and prices of tobacco products that lowers affordability of tobacco products might be a key strategy for inducing cessation behaviour among current smokers and reducing overall tobacco consumption. Because low-SES smokers are more sensitive to price increases, tobacco taxation policy can induce disproportionately larger decreases in tobacco consumption among them and help reduce socio-economic disparities in smoking and consequent health outcomes.
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Comparative Study
Decreased psychomotor vigilance of female shift workers after working night shifts.
We compared psychomotor vigilance in female shift workers of the Bergmannsheil University Hospital in Bochum, Germany (N = 74, 94% nurses) after day and night shifts. ⋯ Our results add to the growing body of literature demonstrating that night-shift work is associated with decreased psychomotor vigilance. As the analysis of RTCV suggests, performance deficits may selectively be driven by few slow reactions at the lower end of the reaction time distribution function. Comparing intra-individual PVT-performances over three consecutive night and two consecutive day shifts, we observed performance improvements after the third night shift. Although a training effect cannot be ruled out, this finding may suggest better adaptation to the night schedule if avoiding fast-changing shift schedules.
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Radiomics studies require large patient cohorts, which often include patients imaged using different imaging protocols. We aimed to determine the impact of variability in imaging protocol parameters and interscanner variability using a phantom that produced feature values similar to those of patients. Positron emission tomography (PET) scans of a Hoffman brain phantom were acquired on GE Discovery 710, Siemens mCT, and Philips Vereos scanners. ⋯ The average ratio of the standard deviation of features on the phantom scans to that of the NSCLC patient scans was 0.73 using fixed-bin-width preprocessing and 0.92 using 64-level preprocessing. Most radiomics feature values had at least good reliability when imaging protocol parameters were within clinically used ranges. However, interscanner variability was about equal to interpatient variability; therefore, caution must be used when combining patients scanned on equipment from different vendors in radiomics data sets.
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Comparative Study
Comparative evaluation of cerebral gliomas using rCBV measurements during sequential acquisition of T1-perfusion and T2*-perfusion MRI.
To assess the inter-technique agreement of relative cerebral blood volume (rCBV) measurements obtained using T1- and T2*-perfusion MRI on 3T scanner in glioma patients. ⋯ In the current study, T1- and T2*-perfusion showed similar diagnostic performance for discrimination of grade III and grade IV gliomas; however, T1-perfusion was found to be better for the evaluation of tumors with intratumoral hemorrhage, postoperative recurrent tumors, and lesions near skull base. We conclude that T1-perfusion MRI with a single dose of contrast could be used as an alternative to T2*-perfusion to overcome the issues associated with this technique in brain tumors for reliable perfusion quantification.