Family functioning and adherence behaviors are strongly related to a child's health status. Assessment of diabetes-specific family functioning, in addition to adherence, is an important factor in understanding metabolic control.

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Radiotherapy in patients with skin cancer with clinical perineural invasion should include treatment of the first-echelon regional lymphatics. The risk of regional node involvement is also relatively high for patients with squamous cell carcinoma with microscopic perineural invasion. In patients with clinical perineural invasion, the poor local control rates with conventional radiotherapy suggest a need for dose escalation with or without concomitant chemotherapy.

The measurement properties of the newly developed Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory TM (PedsQL TM ) 3.0 Transplant Module in pediatric solid organ transplant recipients were evaluated. Participants included pediatric recipients of liver, kidney, heart and small bowel transplantation who were cared for at seven medical centers across the United States and their parents. Three hundred and thirty-eight parents of children ages 2-18 and 274 children ages 5-18 completed both the PedsQL TM 4.0 Generic Core Scales and the Transplant Module. Findings suggest that child self-report and parent proxy-report scales on the Transplant Module demonstrated excellent reliability (total scale score for child self-report a = 0.93; total scale score for parent proxy-report a = 0.94). Transplant-specific symptoms or problems were significantly correlated with lower generic HRQOL, supporting construct validity. Children with solid organ transplants and their parents reported statistically significant lower generic HRQOL than healthy children. Parent and child reports showed moderate to good agreement across the scales. In conclusion, the PedsQL TM Transplant Module demonstrated excellent initial feasibility, reliability and construct validity in pediatric patients with solid organ transplants.