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Background: Clinicians and researchers commonly use global cognitive assessments to screen for impairment. Currently there are no published studies directly comparing the sensitivity and specificity of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and Mattis Dementia Rating Scale-2 in PD. The objective of this study was to identify the relative sensitivity and specificity of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and Mattis Dementia Rating Scale-2 in PD.Methods: The Montreal Cognitive Assessment and Mattis Dementia Rating Scale-2 were administered to training and validation cohorts. Cutoff scores were determined within the training cohort (n = 85) to optimize sensitivity and specificity for cognitive impairment and were applied to an independent validation cohort (n = 521).Results: The Montreal Cognitive Assessment was consistently sensitive across training and validation cohorts (90.0% and 80.3%, respectively), whereas the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale-2 was not (87.5% and 60.3%, respectively). In individual domains, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment remained sensitive to memory and visuospatial impairments (91.9% and 87.8%, respectively), whereas the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale-2 was sensitive to executive impairments (86.2%).Conclusion: The Montreal Cognitive Assessment and Mattis Dementia Rating Scale-2 demonstrated individual strengths. Future work should focus on developing domain-specific cognitive screening tools for PD. © 2018 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The safety of combined immunotherapy and thoracic radiation therapy (iRT) has been understudied. We evaluated toxicities in patients receiving iRT from 3 single-institutional phase 1/2 trials.Methods and Materials: Clinical/treatment characteristics and toxicities (per the Common Toxicity Criteria for Adverse Events, version 4.0) were extracted. For purposes of this analysis, groupings were made into (1) patients receiving immunotherapy plus stereotactic body radiation therapy (50 Gy/4 fractions or 60 Gy/10 fractions), (2) immunotherapy plus 45 Gy/15 fractions, and (3) twice-daily chemoimmunoradiotherapy (45 Gy in twice-daily fractions).Results: None of the 60 patients undergoing immunotherapy plus stereotactic body radiation therapy (50 Gy, n = 49; 60 Gy, n = 11) experienced grade ≥4 events. There were 34 instances of any grade 3 event (in 15 total patients), with 9 pulmonary specific grade 3 events (in 4 patients). In the patients receiving 45 Gy/15 fractions (small cell lung cancers, n = 26; non-small cell lung cancers, n = 27), there were 2 grade 4 events (in the same patient), along with 17 grade 3 toxicities experienced by 10 total patients (2 pulmonary specific). Lastly, in the twice-daily cohort (n = 22), there were 5 grade 4 events (3 of which occurred in 1 patient) and 16 grade 3 toxicities occurring in 8 total patients (half of which were hematologic).Conclusions: Administration of combined iRT is safe in the short term. Toxicities did not appreciably associate with demographics or dosimetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]