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Opioid use has reached an epidemic proportion in Canada and the United States that is mostly attributed to excess availability of prescribed opioids for pain. This excess in opioid use led to an increase in the prevalence of opioid use disorder (OUD) requiring treatment. The most common treatment recommendations include medication-assisted treatment (MAT) combined with psychosocial interventions. Clinical trials investigating the effectiveness of MAT, however, have a limited focus on effectiveness measures that overlook patient-important outcomes. Despite MAT, patients with OUD continue to suffer negative consequences of opioid use. Patient goals and personalized medicine are overlooked in clinical trials and guidelines, thus missing an opportunity to improve prognosis of OUD by considering precision medicine in addiction trials. In this mixed-methods study, patients with OUD receiving MAT (n=2,031, mean age 39.1 years [SD 10.7], 44% female) were interviewed to identify patient goals for MAT. The most frequently reported patient-important outcomes were to stop treatment (39%) and to avoid all drugs (25%). These results are inconsistent with treatment recommendations and trial outcome measures. We discuss theses inconsistencies and make recommendations to incorporate these outcomes to achieve patient-centered and personalized treatment strategies.

Objective: Despite improvements in pediatric brain tumor outcomes, the survivors of childhood brain tumor are burdened by multiple comorbidities. This work reports on the relative survival ratios and excess mortality rate in children with astrocytic tumors over the past four decades., Methods: Survival analysis was conducted using flexible parametric model to estimate relative survival and excess mortality rate for non-white and white children (0-19 years old) using the Surveillance, Epidemiology & End Results (SEER) database. We incorporated age group and year of diagnosis into the model to estimate these indices for the period of 1973-2010., Results: Progressive decline in relative survival ratios was noted over time. Non-white children had lower survival rates than white children, and these survival patterns persisted over the four-decade span of the study. Fifty percent of non-white survivors were deceased 30 years post diagnosis, compared to 35 years in white survivors., Conclusions: Survivors of childhood brain tumors have progressively lower survival rates as they get older, and this is higher in non-white when compared to white children. Future research efforts need to focus on understanding the factors mediating the effect of the tumor or its treatment on survival in these patients, and the ethnic variations that derive these survival trends., (© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)