Half of elderly patients with breast cancer are undertreated, with strongly decreased specific survival as a consequence. Treatments need to be adapted to the patient's health status, but also should offer the best chance of cure.

Complete surgical excision of the primary tumor improves survival of patients with metastatic breast cancer at diagnosis, particularly among women with only bone metastases.

LNR predicts survival after breast cancer more accurately than pN classification and should be considered as an alternative to pN staging.

Despite increased interest in treatment of senior cancer patients, older patients are much too often undertreated. This review aims to present data on treatment practices of older women with breast and gynecologic cancers and on the consequences of undertreatment on patient outcome. We also discuss the reasons and validity of suboptimal care in older patients. Numerous studies have reported suboptimal treatment in older breast and gynecologic cancer patients. Undertreatment displays multiple aspects: from lowered doses of adjuvant chemotherapy to total therapeutic abstention. Undertreatment also concerns palliative care, treatment of pain, and reconstruction. Only few studies have evaluated the consequences of nonstandard approaches on cancer-specific mortality, taking into account other prognostic factors and comorbidities. These studies clearly showed that undertreatment increased disease-specific mortality for breast and ovarian cancers. For other gynecological cancers, data were insufficient to draw conclusions. Objective reasons at the origin of undertreatment were, notably, higher prevalence of comorbidity, lowered life expectancy, absence of data on treatment efficacy in clinical trials, and increased adverse effects of treatment. More subjective reasons were putative lowered benefits of treatment, less aggressive cancers, social marginalization, and physician's beliefs. Undertreatment in older cancer patients is a well-documented phenomenon responsible for preventable cancer deaths. Treatments are still influenced by unclear standards and have to be adapted to the older patient's general health status, but should also offer the best chance of cure.

Background: Histopathology is a cornerstone in the diagnosis of cervical cancer but the prognostic value is controversial.

There is considerable data supporting the use of nodal ratios in breast cancer prognosis. A thorough and methodological evaluation of the potential prognostic importance of nodal ratios in large multicenter data sets is merited and is currently being undertaken by the International Nodal Ratio Working Group.

Introduction The number of lymph nodes found to be involved in an axillary dissection is among the most powerful prognostic factors in breast cancer, but it is confounded by the number of lymph nodes that have been examined. We investigate an idea that has surfaced recently in the literature (since 1999), namely that the proportion of node-positive lymph nodes (or a function thereof) is a much better predictor of survival than the number of excised and node-positive lymph nodes, alone or together.

Oberflächenchemie: Eine durch thermische Oxidation und Nitrierung hergestellte Ta3N5‐Photoanode zeigt den höchsten bisher mit einer Ta3N5‐Photoanode erreichten Photostrom. Dieser Photostrom entsteht hauptsächlich als Folge des leichten thermischen und mechanischen Abblätterns der passivierenden Oberflächenschicht von der Ta3N5‐Photoanode (siehe Bild).