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Cervical cancer is a common disease that can be carried by women. It is the 3rd leading cause of female cancer in Malaysia and the 4th most common type of cancer for women globally. Referring to the HPV Information Centre in 2018, it is estimated that 1682 women are diagnosed and 944 die from having cervical cells. In 2018, 569, 847 of the 18,078,957 cases were categorised as cervical cancer, which is 3.2%. With the advancement in science and technology, cervical cancer can be detected at an early stage by conducting a Pap smear test. This test will filter abnormal cervical cells and detect precancerous changes in cervical cells based on the colour and shape properties of their nuclei and cytoplasm. The problem is that performing the procedure manually can be time-consuming and cause inconsistencies and errors even further because the cervical cell itself does not show an obvious difference in texture and colour from normal cells. This paper will focus on colour contrast enhancement of the cervical cell using a few methods such as Contrast Stretching (CS), CLAHE, Histogram Equalization (HE), Image Adjustment, and Multi Scale Retinex (MSR). From this research, the cervical cell colour contrast can be enhanced to a better level and the detection of cervical cells can happen faster and more accurately. Hence, the errors in detecting can be reduced again so they can be treated soon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer is the leading cause of death across the world. Most cancer patients get diagnosed in advanced stages, and in most cases, there is no full cure. Once diagnosed, cancer patients suffer from a variety of disorders that can lead to physical, mental, and emotional trauma. In most cases, the patient symptoms are not adequately addressed. Moreover, today's technology does not allow oncologists and clinicians to accurately estimate the patient survival time. In most countries, the end-of-life care expenditure can also be significantly high. However, research shows that palliative care and hospice services offered early in the disease trajectory can significantly bring down end-of-life care expenditures and improve the quality of care. This paper presents the design of a Cancer patient end-of-life care recommender system and primarily focuses on its various components. Using the lens of one of my studies performed in the context of Ovarian Cancer patients, in this paper, I try to establish the usefulness of such a recommender system's various components in light of other contemporary studies that have shown success using these individual tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer patients seek information about their health and illness using many different approaches. Some prefer to seek intensively whereas other avoid seeking information. Over the course of the cancer continuum an individual may meet their needs using several different approaches. In this paper, we explore how avoidance can be an approach used as part of information seeking activities and not just as an alternative approach. Interviews with six current and former cancer patients were conducted and audio recorded for transcription. The transcriptions were coded to identify themes and concepts. We identify the different patterns of information seeking among the interviewees ranging from seeking intensively to avoiding information. Furthermore, we find that exposing yourself selectively to information as well as avoiding some information can be strategies to protect the information seeker from information the individual is not able to cope with. This study indicates that information seeking approaches are overlapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changing customer needs and short product life cycles, confront production systems with growing challenges, especially in terms of flexibility and production speed. To analyze the system behavior, mathematical models and models based on logical relationships are created. However, as manufacturing systems become more complex, these methods reach their limits, and simulation is increasingly used. Simulation has gained relevance as a method of analysis. The potentials of simulation of manufacturing processes are contrasted by high efforts in the preparation and integration. Chances for increasing the efficiency of simulation studies can be seen in the conceptual model development, model generation and verification, and validation. Metamodeling offers an approach for reducing the effort in the creation of simulation models by providing common syntax, semantics, or structural features. This work represents a structured literature review investigating current research work on metamodeling in manufacturing systems. Application areas and different types of metamodels are made visible and further research is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A disease network is a collaborative healthcare network focusing on a single disease, or a group of diseases, whether professional or formalized. A disease network may follow a “hub and spoke” model. Providing these networks with an efficient digital support poses some challenges. This paper describes the methodological approach to design the information system supporting such a disease network. After identifying a general model with network features, a use case related to the Italian Rare Cancer Network is reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer in the world. Currently, there are no effective methods to prevent this disease. However, early diagnosis increases chances of remission. Breast thermography is an option to be considered in screening strategies. This paper proposes a new dynamic breast thermography analysis technique in order to identify patients at risk for breast cancer. Thermal signals from patients of the Antonio Pedro University Hospital (HUAP), available at the Mastology Database for Research with Infrared Image - DMR-IR were used to validate the study. First, each patient's images are registered. Then, the breast region is divided into subregions of 3x3 pixels and the average temperature from each of these regions is observed in all images of the same patient. Features of the thermal signals of such subregions are calculated. Then, the k-means algorithm is applied over feature vectors building two clusters. Silhouette index, Davies-Bouldin index and Calinski-Harabasz index are applied to evaluate the clustering. The test results showed that the methodology presented in this paper is able to identify patients with breast cancer. Classification techniques have been applied on the index values and 90.90% hit rate has been achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applications of genomic technologies in medical practice marks a significant outcome of convergences between big data and health. This paper explores genomic literacy among oncologists in the Personalized Onco-Genomics (POG) cancer clinical trial. POG represents spaces of convergence between medical and computing sciences, as well as doctors and data scientists. The paper gathers data from a survey and semi-structured interviews with medical oncologists and other scientists at POG. Using this data I identified two challenges in applying genomics in clinical practice including lack of knowledge equivalence among different medical stakeholders and diagnostic uncertainty of genomic information. POG makes it possible to bridge these gaps. POG instantiates a pedagogical space where different medical stakeholders come together to co-construct and translate genomic data into clinical information through their communicative and discursive processes, as they learn more about genomics. As such, communication and discourse play an important role in improving genomic literacy among physicians and facilitating knowledge translation of genomics. Higher genomic literacy can influence clinical treatments for cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer is one of the most well-known diseases in human history. While defeating cancer has become possible, recovery from side-effects of previous treatments and improving physical and psychological ability become the next goal of returning to daily lives. Physiotherapical treatments have been proven to be effective in improving cancer patinets’ physical and mental functions and survival rate. The primary purpose of the paper is to present a guideline of making a clinical decision on choosing certain types of physical therapy treatment for cancer rehabilitation, including aquatic exercise, clinical massage therapy, and electrical stimulation treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poorer cancer outcomes experienced by Indigenous Australians result from reduced access to culturally appropriate support services. Living with cancer is linked to a high prevalence of social isolation, stress, anxiety, and consequently experiencing lower level of psychosocial well-being. Resources to support the psychosocial well-being of Indigenous people with cancer must be available at the point of need. The web is increasingly becoming a viable platform for delivery of health services that are accessible at any time and from anywhere. There is a lack of culturally and language-appropriate web-based health services for Indigenous Australians with cancer and this paper which is a part of a bigger study informs the development of a culturally and language-appropriate smartphone-based support intervention for improving the psychological well-being of Indigenous Australian people with cancer. Drawing on evidence from research across diverse fields and applying a multi-theory perspective, we developed a conceptual framework that depicts the features needed for a smartphone based health intervention to effectively support Indigenous Australians living with cancer and enable them to obtain culturally appropriate cancer care support and experience better psychosocial well-being. Next, we conducted structured interviews with experts to examine the sense making and validity of the proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a multi-objective model for scheduling Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy Treatment (IMRT) in patients with lung cancer, based on Genetic Algorithms (GA). The suggested approach is used to minimise the fitness function defined as the mean squared error by optimizing the weight between layers and biases. When compared to existing algorithms, the suggested GA-based Firefly Algorithm (FA) technique was shown to have the lowest mean squared error of 0.0014. The GA schedules, using real data acquired at the Cancer Center in collaboration, are effective. The suggested GA-based FA is discussed and assessment results are displayed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs), are cells found in the bloodstream during the metastasis process, which originate from primary or secondary tumors in patients with cancer. The number of CTCs in the blood, can be used for early diagnosis, prognosis evaluation and even treatment efficiency evaluation. CTCs have different surface markers than the normal blood cells and are defined as EpCAM+ /CK+ /DAPI+ /CD45− cells. In this paper we describe the development of a microfluidic device which can count, and capture CTCs present in a blood sample from cancer patients. The device has a lysis section, a lysis stopping and cell conservation region, two counting electrodes and an antibody functionalized micro-structured capture chamber. The lysis section is used to destroy erythrocytes, whose number is of millions per microliter of blood and can interfere with the count. The electrodes, situated at the entrance and exit of the capture chamber, rely on Coulter Principle to count CTCs, which are larger than other blood cells. The capture chamber is functionalized with anti-EpCAM antibodies, which are going to specifically capture the CTCs in the blood sample. By using two types of CTCs detection methods, our device has increased specificity and sensibility and by changing the antibodies we can study and capture different tumor cell subpopulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I trouble the notion of what counts as an intersectional identity in the study of healthcare. Through a qualitative exploration of the experiences of Black women with advanced cancer, I posit that cancer patienthood, one's identity as a cancer patient post-diagnosis, is itself an important identity in studying the experience of health and illness. I describe the way the intersections of race, gender and patient identity impact experiences of patienthood, relationships with providers and understanding of disease and prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) have been increasingly integrated into patient-facing technologies to engage and empower patients in cancer self-management at home. However, researchers and developers face several challenges in selecting the best-suited PROMs for patient-facing technologies, due to the complex nature of the disease, the multitude of PROMs with high psychometric quality, and the lack of clear standards for PROM utilization. In this paper, we have discussed these challenges, illustrated by breast cancer instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preparation of nurses caring for patients with chronic conditions such as cancer remains a topical subject. Nursing curricula emphasizes the breadth of knowledge and caring skills required by nurses to suit all the key long term patient morbidities. Since the incidence of cancer is increasing and is a global problem nurses will come cross patients with cancer as a main or subsidiary condition and thus need an awareness of the care and needs of these patients. Currently, there is limited information on the preparation of pre-registered nursing students and little is known about the experiences of these students, especially during their initial exposure to cancer patients. A British study conducted in 2006 [2] produced several key themes: cancer appears as a wide reaching disease appearing in a variety of clinical areas, students felt scared of discussing cancer and they indicated personal experiences and support structures influenced their outlook on cancer and nursing these patients. This same study repeated ten years on indicates the student demographic is very different as is the attitude towards and of cancer care. The sample is also different (n=134 in 2003-2004 and n=73 in 2016-2017) however the differences may point to generational differences, general education or greater awareness or exposure to cancer as a chronic condition. Experiences of caring for cancer patients increased from 66% in 2003-4 to 75.34% in 2016-17. Similarly dramatic differences were observed in reported aspects such as confidence to care for cancer patients increased form 34% to 96%, learning most about cancer from caring for cancer patients (from 47% to 68%) and feeling supported by mentors to care for cancer patients (from 39% to 83%). The survey points to some noticeable differences in the reported attitudes and knowledge of cancer in the survey. Planned interviews may elucidate the issues and feelings but are yet to be completed. This paper will further address comparisons within the findings and discuss how this can inform curriculum development for contemporary nurse education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prediction of mortality risk for post-operative lung resection patients with scores may recommend the physicians to change the course of treatment to increase the life expectancy. Numerous post-operative scores such as biochemical, demographic and spirometric variables were used to predict the mortality risk and treatment post-surgery. Such large number of variables misleads the treatment as well as increase the complexity of decision making processes. In this paper, the prediction accuracy and complexity of support vector machine classification model before and after feature ranking was studied. Four feature ranking algorithms such as oneR, gain ratio, information gain and symmetrical uncertainty were used to rank the feature subsets. The classification accuracy and complexity before the feature selection was 84.89% and 78,264 kernels evaluated, respectively. However, after feature selection, the accuracy improved to 85.14% and complexity significantly reduced to ~40% due to the reduction in number of kernels evaluated. These results highlighted the importance of feature selection to predict the life expectancy of post-operative lung cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the issues surrounding palliative care, advanced directives and lay navigators working with cancer patients. These data come from 26 face-to-face interviews with lay navigators in the Southeastern U.S. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using NVIVO software. Preliminary findings show three major themes. 1. Timing for talking about dying is delicate, 2. There is a contested terrain among professionals as to the jurisdiction of authority granted the lay navigators, vis-à-vis social workers, doctors and nurses. 3. Consistent and frequent training of lay navigators is important. This research builds upon the sociological research on death, dying, and chronic illness. In addition, the results show that the proliferation of roles in health care continues with the introduction of lay navigators, and delineating boundaries among the professions is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer is one of the greatest diseases of our time. In Europe, more than 3 million new cases are diagnosed each year. In Slovakia, there are more than 22,000 new cases annually. Statistically, one in three people suffers from cancer. This disease has many consequences which affect quality of life. The specific anti-cancer drug therapy is conducted predominantly through parenteral and peripheral venous system; moreover, in some cases prolonged treatment is significantly burdening, what also directly affects the quality of life. The main goal of this paper is to find out how patients with complicated venous access evaluate their quality of life. We used standardized questionnaire WHOQOL-BREF. Our respondents were patients of Narodny onkologicky ustav in Bratislava and patients of Vychodoslovensky onkologicky ustav in Kosice. These are the biggest cancer hospitals in Slovakia. Data collection was carried out by self-administration and we had 105 respondents. We evaluated our data through the statistical program SPSS. Cancer patients with complicated venous access evaluated their quality of life as very low. We did not find any differences between quality of life and age, education and family status and we did not find any differences between patients in Bratislava and Kosice. These factors are evaluated subjectively from the patients' point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was aimed at identifying how telemedicine is used for rehabilitation of patients with cancer. An electronic literature search was conducted using the PubMed database covering January 2015 to October 2020. To be included in the review, studies had to report telerehabilitation interventions for patients with cancer. Randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental studies, as well as feasibility and usability studies were included, and reviews were excluded. Overall, 33 eligible studies were found but only 22 were considered for inclusion. After a detailed analysis, 16 studies were included. Most of the studies concluded that telehealth systems supporting physical exercise were effective to improve function, quality of life, pain, satisfaction and muscle strength. Limitations in most of the studies included non-randomized design and limited number of subjects. We conluded that more studies are needed for stronger evidence of this type of treatment and to facilitate clinical practice in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer is one of leading cause of death in developed countries. While the establishment brags that more cancer patients survive than ever before, the horrific side effects inflicted by conventional therapy often leave patients partially or severely debilitated, and set the stage for deadly secondary diseases. For those people suffering from cancer the dangerous mix of chemotherapy and surgery not only failed to cure the cancer, but destroyed their remaining quality of life. The laser treatment has the potential to destroy primary breast tumors. This unique treatment can also seek and destroy cancer cells that have spread (metastasized) from the original tumor to other parts of the body. This is especially critical as metastasized cells are the primary cause of cancer death. A laser beam operating in the near-infrared frequency of light heats tissue to a depth of several centimeters, allowing the beam to penetrate directly into a solid tumor with minimal damage to normal tissue because it can be focused directly through intact skin, no surgical incision is required. In recent years there has been much progress in the use of optical diagnostics Methods in the detection & diagnosis of breast cancer. Early diagnosis of breast cancer affords early intervention and greatest chance to cure. Laser induced Fluorescence spectroscopy (LIF); Synchronous Luminescence (SL) Spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy are some of the technique used to detect the cancer in early stage. In our diagnostic studies, we used the technique of Raman scattering. Raman spectroscopy is based on the interaction of photons with the target material producing a highly detailed biochemical 'fingerprints' of the sample. It can be appreciated that such a sensitive biochemical detection system could confer diagnostic benefit in a clinical setting. Raman spectroscopy has been successfully used as a key for the detection & diagnosis of breast cancer. Raman spectroscopy could confer a great to a patient with early, rapid and accurate diagnosis. This technique is almost labour free without the need for sample preparation. It could reduce the need for whole pathological specimen examination, in theatre it could help to determine margin status, and finally peripheral blood diagnosis may be an achievable target. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radioactive Carbon-14 and Fluorine-18 isotopes were bombarded with alpha particles within an energy range of (10–100MeV) the electronic and nuclear stopping power was calculated using SRIM2013 program. After that, we used the Matlab program and the Igor program to compute the total stopping force in non-calculated energy values in the SRIM program, and the work of interpolated to calculate the total stopping power of the radioactive Carbon-14 and Fluorine-18 isotope used in the treatment of cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast cancer is the most frequent cancer in women, although it may affect either gender. It is responsible for an unfathomable amount of deaths globally. In a particularly low-resource developing country, there is a lack of knowledge and facilities, particularly in rural regions, as well as a high percentage of breast cancer discovered in the late stages. Early identification of breast cancer, on the other hand, can help raise the chances of survival. With a rising number of patients, manual examination of medical photographs has become tiresome, time consuming, and impractical. With advances in machine learning, it is now feasible to develop an automatic and efficient Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system and make the entire process of identifying a malignant tumor better resources efficient and time saving through correct use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is either used to complement standard oncological therapies to help in alleviating patients' symptoms and side effects from chemotherapy, thus improving their quality of life (QOL), including the patient's emotional, social, and physical wellbeing, since pain is the most frequent distress amongst oncological patients, or to directly fight cancer as an alternative therapy to conventional treatments. Common practices of many complementary and alternative treatments emphasise on good nutrition and prophylaxis. Thus, CAM acts by boosting the natural immunity of the body to induce necrosis of carcinogen cells; nevertheless, further scientific research is required to identify and quantify the improvements in oncological patients' health due to the complementary and alternative therapies used. Furthermore, it is also important to discern the effects due to CAM itself, as opposed to those that occur because of other concurrent treatments, and to understand their safety profile, also considering its interaction with conventional oncological therapies. In this study, evidence-based information is analysed and discussed on CAM used for cancer, such as Cannabidiol (CBD), Graviola (soursop), Origanum Vulgare, Zamzam Water (ZW), Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and Paris Polyphylla. Findings suggest that various complementary medical therapies can help to improve oncological patients' wellbeing, when undergone along with standard oncological treatments, e.g., CBD proved beneficial for improving a variety of symptoms, such as pain and nausea. Similarly, alternative therapies, such as TCM, are approved to be used in China to treat various tumours. Furthermore, the side effects of conventional treatments and dissatisfaction were identified amongst the push factors to use CAM, whilst pull factors included the positive aspects associated with CAM, such as fewer side effects, stronger immunity, and an enhanced QOL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dermatoglypics is one of the most unique subjects which helps in the investigation to identify individuals in medical and forensic sciences. Fingerprint patterns are developed during the third and fourth month of the growth of the foetus and do not change with time. These patterns represent genetic makeup and thus help to identify or predict diseases. Various diseases such as down‟s syndrome, turner syndrome, patau syndrome, etc. are studied using dermatoglyphics. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 48 individuals, in which 24 samples were collected from patients suffering from Cancer and other 24 control samples were collected from healthy individuals whose age group is between 25 to 60 years old, having no sign of symptoms and no family history of cancer. Fingerprints from individuals (both control and cases) were collected using the Ink Method. These patterns are divided into 4 types i.e., arches, loops, whorls and no patterns (as there is loss of fingerprint pattern in cancer patients). Study and analysis of fingerprint patterns in controls and cases helps us to understand their relation and how dermatoglyphics in cancer patients are affected. This study also helps for early prediction or detection, which in-turn helps for early therapy and thus helpful to save individuals' lives. This study also helps us to reduce risk factors and it is a simple, low cost and non-invasive method for screening the cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast cancer has been one of the deadliest diseases and becomes the leading cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide. It becomes an issue to any countries as the number of victims developing breast cancer is increasing, and the survivability rate of cancerous women is still ambiguous. In this study, a hybrid classification model is developed for predicting breast cancer survivability. The hybrid classification model is a combination of three single classification models, namely Naive Bayes, J48 Decision Tree and RBF Network. Stacking method has been used to combine those models. This hybrid model has been tested using Breast Cancer Wisconsin dataset which gives result 96.14% of accuracy, 96.30% of precision, 96.10% of recall and 96.20% of f-measure. These results are outperformed each of the single classifiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Typical univariate measures of variation in chemotherapy protocols fail to capture and describe the full multi-dimensional complexity of treatment adjustments in real-world data. In this preliminary work, we propose novel visualisations of observed treatment events, as well as treatment-as-delivered relative to initial prescriptions, as a means of gaining insights into complex patterns of treatment variation in cancer patients. Simple clustering techniques were also used to confirm the utility of these visualisations and our ability to correlate observed variations with historical events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Infobuttons" spearheaded electronic health records (EHR) based decision support by offering automated knowledge resources to physicians. However, how such a mechanism could be leveraged to provide optimal resources to patients remains unanswered. Informatics approaches are expected to utilize more relevant information beyond EHR, such as patient-reported outcomes, to support clinical decisions. This pilot study is intended to explore how patient-reported outcomes version of the common terminology criteria for adverse events (PRO-CTCAE) in EHR can be incorporated and how to recommend tailored content to cancer patients via automated feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monophasic biomaterials cannot provide all the necessary functions of bones or other calcined tissues. It is necessary to create for cancer patients the multiphase materials with the structure and composition simulating the natural bone. Such materials are classified as hybrid, obtained by a combination of chemically different components. The paper presents the physical, chemical and biological studies of coatings produced by hybrid technologies (HT), which combine primer layer and calcium phosphate (CaP) coating. The first HT type combines the method of vacuum arc titanium primer layer deposition on a stainless steel substrate with the following micro-arc oxidation (MAO) in phosphoric acid solution with addition of calcium compounds to achieve high supersaturated state. MAO CaP coatings feature high porosity (2-8%, pore size 5-7 μm) and surface morphology with the thickness greater than 5 μm. The thickness of Ti primer layer is 5-40 μm. Amorphous MAO CaP coating micro-hardness was measured at maximum normal load Fmax = 300 mN. It was 3.1 ± 0.8 GPa, surface layer elasticity modulus E = 110 ± 20 GPa, roughness Ra = 0.9 ± 0.1 μm, Rz = 7.5 ± 0.2 μm, which is less than the titanium primer layer roughness. Hybrid MAO CaP coating is biocompatible, able to form calcium phosphates from supersaturated body fluid (SBF) solution and also stimulates osteoinduction processes. The second HT type includes the oxide layer formation by thermal oxidation and then CaP target radio frequency magnetron sputtering (RFMS). Oxide-RFMS CaP coating is a thin dense coating with good adhesion to the substrate material, which can be used for metal implants. The RFMS CaP coating has thickness 1.6 ± 0.1 μm and consists of main target elements calcium and phosphorus and Ca/P ratio 2.4. The second HT type can form calcium phosphates from SBF solution. In vivo study shows that hybrid RFMS CaP coating is biocompatible and produces fibrointegration processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heavy metal exposure is regarded as the most serious threat to human health and the biological system, Increases and decreases in them cause a great deal of damage, including toxicity. Recently, an increase in cancer cases has been observed in Babil Governorate which is a major motivation to measure the concentration of heavy metals in human serum of blood. In this study, 15 samples were taken from lung cancer patients compared with 15 healthy peoples volunteers. The level of Pb found to be range (0.1211 - 0.1684 ppm, Mean±SD=0.14001±0.0144 ppm in healthy group) but was found (0.0895 - 0.1526 ppm, Mean±SD=0.1266±0.0193 ppm in lung cancer patients). The value of Cd found to be range (0.0460 - 0.0667 ppm Mean±SD=0.05922±0.0047 ppm in healthy group) but was found (0.0563 - 0.0861 ppm Mean±SD=0.0674±0.0070 ppm in patients). The value of Cu found to be range (0.4092 - 0.7415 ppm, Mean±SD=0.5362± 0.1023 ppm in healthy group) The value of Cu found (0.5403 - 1.4488 ppm, Mean±SD = 0.7685±0.2350 ppm in patients). These study concluded the level of Pb in patients and healthy group were found higher than acceptable limits 0.05 ppm, but was found the level of Copper and Cadmium less than acceptable limits at 1.59 and 0.12 ppm in patients and healthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to measure AST, ALT, GGT, TP, LDH, and albumin in patients with breast cancer to assess ceruloplasmin, Cu, SA, and liver. Materials and Procedures: The research was completed.Materials and Methods: The research was conducted at Kirkuk Teaching Hospital. The study included 64 women who had BC. Their ages ranged from 30 to 56 years old. The control group consisted of 64 matched normal individuals. Patients had lower total protein and albumin concentrations than the control group. The findings suggest that serum sialic acid levels may be useful in the diagnosis of disese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast cancer refers to the unpredictable growth and propagation of cells that originate in the breast tissue. In the present world breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women. Research has been carried out by scientists from all over the world over a decade of time. As a result, reasons like, increasing age, puberty at an early age or menopause at older age, obesity, giving birth at an older age, non pregnancy and personal and family genetic history of health issues are known to be vital causing factors of breast cancer. This article focuses on finding the attributes which have high impact in causing the breast cancer by the concept of attribute reduction as an application of nano topology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online forums play an important role in connecting people who have crossed paths with cancer. These communities create networks of mutual support that cover different cancer-related topics, containing an extensive amount of heterogeneous information that can be mined to get useful insights. This work presents a case study where users' posts from an Italian cancer patient community have been classified combining both count-based and prediction-based representations to identify discussion topics, with the aim of improving message reviewing and filtering. We demonstrate that pairing simple bag-of-words representations based on keywords matching with pre-trained contextual embeddings significantly improves the overall quality of the predictions and allows the model to handle ambiguities and misspellings. By using non-English real-world data, we also investigated the reusability of pretrained multilingual models like BERT in lower data regimes like many local medical institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precision oncology is expected to improve selection of targeted therapies, tailored to individual patients and ultimately improve cancer patients' outcomes. Several cancer genetics knowledge databases have been successfully developed for such purposes, including CIViC and OncoKB, with active community-based curations and scoring of genetic-treatment evidences. Although many studies were conducted based on each knowledge base respectively, the integrative analysis across both knowledge bases remains largely unexplored. Thus, there exists an urgent need for a heterogeneous precision oncology knowledge resource with computational power to support drug repurposing discovery in a timely manner, especially for life-threatening cancer. In this pilot study, we built a heterogeneous precision oncology knowledge resource (POKR) by integrating CIViC and OncoKB, in order to incorporate unique information contained in each knowledge base and make associations amongst biomedical entities (e.g., gene, drug, disease) computable and measurable via training POKR graph embeddings. All the relevant codes, database dump files, and pre-trained POKR embeddings can be accessed through the following URL: https://github.com/shenfc/POKR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine Learning (ML) is being successfully used in many science areas, medicine being no exception. On the other hand, cancer is a heterogeneous disease consisting of various subtypes and possible treatments that generate a lot of data (Big Data). This study sets out to identify, evaluate and interpret published research that examines how predicting the outcome of treating cancer can benefit from making use of ML. To achieve this, a systematic review of the literature was conducted. This review resulted in finding 1,855 studies, 32 of which were identified as primary studies. They were then classified according to research area and the aspect of ML they focus on. The results show gaps in current research as no studies were identified on ML using Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA), a fundamental tool that is used to improve caring for elderly patients with cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study that aims to systematically develop an oncological module that can be implemented in the Health Communicator tool that will help bridge linguistic and cultural barriers between older cancer patients of Turkish and Moroccan background and their healthcare providers. It mentions that older migrant cancer patients experience miscommunication with their healthcare providers, due to a combination of lower language proficiency and socio-cultural factors.

Although decision aids have been successful in improving the quality of decision making, they are insufficiently adapted to the cognitive changes that older patients face. The aim of this study was twofold. First, to investigate the effectiveness of incorporating two strategies with expected potential for older patients (modality and narration style) in a decision aid. Second, to study the relationship between satisfaction with the information, recall and informed decision making in older (vs. younger) patients. A 2(Modality: visual vs. audiovisual) x 2(Narration style: narrative vs. factual) x 2(Age: <65 years vs. >65 years) experiment was conducted. Data was collected by means of an online experiment including 215 analogue cancer patients as participants. ANOVA's and Structural Equation Modelling were carried out to analyze the data. The results showed an effect of modality on satisfaction with the information, information recall and informed decision making. In addition, we found a sequential mediation effect of modality, via satisfaction and subsequently recall on informed decision making. Narration style had an effect on satisfaction with the information, but not on recall and informed decision making. All effects were found in both older and younger patients. This study has theoretically added value by showing a sequential mediation effect of modality on informed decision making, via satisfaction and subsequently recall. Information provided in decision aids aimed at older cancer patients can be improved by applying the knowledge gained from this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study based on beneficiaries of surrogate cancer information seeking. It mentions that female carers and middle-aged adults are more likely to seek for cancer-related information or contact Cancer Information Service on behalf of a cancer patient. It mentions need for cancer organizations and policy makers to explore barriers and obstacles restraining male partners and older male cancer patients without female informational support from utilizing information services.

The article offers insight to a study which explores how surviving cancer in young adulthood can be a transformational experience for both young adult cancer survivors and their families. It informs on improving cancer experience regarding their perspectives and communication related to overall health and wellness. It also informs on psychosocial, quality of life, and communication challenges associated with cancer.

While increasing attention in society is given to openness and visibility enabled by digital technologies, relatively few studies have considered the consequences that visibility of work creates for role relations. Building on a field study of 115 consultations and interviews with 11 physicians and 30 cancer patients who received digital access to their records, we show unexpected consequences of openness for physician-patient relationships: instead of helping patients to inform themselves and take over the tasks of physicians, the portal seems to increase patients' reliance on professional expertise. Our preliminary findings illustrate that role relations are reinforced even though the portals are introduced and actively used by patients with attempts to alter them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the effects of temporal order and emotional transitions on perception and preference. It mentions that extensive and robust body of research in decision-making has demonstrated that seemingly equivalent methods of elicitation. It mentions that it was documented that lung cancer patients favored different treatment options when the same outcomes were presented in different frames.

The article discusses information behavior of cancer patients in the course of disease with regard to complementary and alternative medicine. It mentions that many oncologists foster a culture of pervasive silence and professional disinterest and patients accordingly rarely consult doctors as a source of information.

Although recent empirical findings have suggested evidence of expression effect over reception effect, there remains both theoretical and methodological complexities concerning whether and under what condition message expression and reception exert influence on various psychosocial outcomes. Relying on social support theory and computational social science approaches, this study aims to examine the effects of empathic exchanges on cancer patient's short- and longterm health outcome. Our findings suggest that both empathy expression and reception are crucial to attaining benefits for cancer patients, each predicting differential cognitive and affective health outcomes. Further, our finding supports the stress-buffering hypothesis that empathy reception provides a beneficial effect for patients who experienced a higher degree of depression associated with their cancer diagnosis and follow-up treatments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined cancer patients' perceived emotional and informational support from interpersonal and media sources. Dutch cancer patients (n = 356) completed an online questionnaire that included measures of medico-demographics and perceived emotional and informational support from interpersonal and media sources. Results showed that professional sources were rated nearly equal to personal sources for emotional support, but significantly greater for informational support. Although family and oncologists were the most mentioned interpersonal sources of support, they were also the most mentioned disappointing sources. All media sources scored relatively high for emotional support and online interaction sources were rated highest for informational support. Emotional support from online interaction sources was rated almost equally as high as interpersonal sources. Since emotional and informational support are perceived across a variety of interpersonal and media sources, communication scholars should work with patients, health care providers, and media developers to ensure sources match patients' support needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With more survivors living five years or longer past their initial diagnosis, the reduction of comorbidities and increase in quality among cancer survivors has become a key public health issue (Department of Health and Human Services, 2014). Within the field of communication, cancer survivors remain under studied despite communication disparities that exist within this population. Cancer survivors may be more likely to experience issues with health literacy, and this could influence treatment compliance and lifestyle behaviors during survivorship (Reyna, Nelson, Han, Dieckmann, 2009). Theoretical linkages between health literacy and health outcomes remain relatively unclear despite numerous studies in multiple health domains that suggest that health literacy affects health behavior (Berkman, et al., 2011). The purpose of this study was to test the self-care pathway of the Pasche-Orlow & Wolf model of health literacy which suggests that health literacy predicts self-care behaviors, which in turn influence health outcomes (2007). Cancer survivors (N = 211) were surveyed using an online platform. Results suggested that indicators of SES predicted numeracy, but not health literacy. Additionally, measures of numeracy acted as a better predictor of self-care behavior than did a general measure of health literacy. Finally, physical activity had an indirect effect mediating the relationship between numeracy and quality of life. Findings suggest that the numeracy component of health literacy should be considered when designing messages for cancer survivors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers make extensive use of patient survey data to understand patient experiences with disease. However, there has been little examination of how gendered expectations for behavior may bias certain types of survey responses. Through a quantitative examination of survivor experiences with lymphoma--a cancer that equally impacts both women and men--we find that compared to men, women report greater posttraumatic growth and more positive impacts of cancer despite having lower health-related quality of life. A qualitative exploration of this phenomenon reveals that gender norms and expectations about masculinity and femininity shape how individuals experience illness and perform the role of patient and survivor. Interviews with survivors reveal that expectations about being a good patient and survivor are more aligned with expectations about femininity and more in conflict with expectations about masculinity. Gender norms discourage men from experiencing personal growth from cancer and encourage women to overemphasize the positive aspects of having had cancer. These findings indicate that viewing cancer as transformative is part of a gender performance that limits opportunities for individuals to experience and express a diverse range of reactions which, at times, increases the emotional burden on individuals. By combining qualitative and quantitative methods in the study of illness, this study gives new insights into the causes of gender differences in the reporting of patient outcomes regarding positive growth after illness. Findings from this research reveal the importance of recognizing the influence of cultural expectations about gender and illness when treating and studying cancer patients and survivors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the study is to describe the lung cancer care process as experienced by patients, as well as to perform a qualitative analysis of problems they encounter throughout the patient journey. A user-centered design approach was used and data collected through two focus group meetings with patients. We present the results in the form of a patient journey model, descriptions of problems related to the journey as expressed by patients and proposed eHealth services discussed by patients in the focus groups. The results indicate that not only is the patient journey fragmented and different for each patient going through it depending upon their specific type of lung cancer and treatment options, but their experiences are also highly individual and dependent on their personal needs and interpretations of the process. Designing eHealth to improve the patient journey will therefore require flexibility and adaptability to the individual's needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) cancer survivors manage an array of health-related issues. Survivorship Care Plans (SCPs) have the potential to empower these young survivors by providing information regarding treatment summary, lateeffects of cancer therapies, healthy lifestyle guidance, coping with work-life-health balance, and follow-up care. However, current mHealth infrastructure used to deliver SCPs has been limited in terms of flexibility, engagement, and reusability. The objective of this study is to develop an ontology-driven survivor engagement framework to facilitate rapid development of mobile apps that are targeted, extensible, and engaging. The major components include ontology models, patient engagement features, and behavioral intervention technologies. We apply the proposed framework to characterize individual building blocks ("survivor digilegos"), which form the basis for mHealth tools that address user needs across the cancer care continuum. Results indicate that the framework (a) allows identification of AYA survivorship components, (b) facilitates infusion of engagement elements, and (c) integrates behavior change constructs into the design architecture of survivorship applications. Implications for design of patient-engaging chronic disease management solutions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]