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Patients ≤50 years old, 2-10 years post-treatment, treated with chemotherapy or SERM had increased SB and decreased QOL. Individualized interventions and programs can be developed to tailor to physical, educational, and psychosocial needs identified across the breast cancer continuum.

BackgroundThe aim of this review is to describe the challenges and barriers to conducting research in long-term care facilities.MethodsA literature search was conducted in Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Central, PsycINFO and CINAHL. Keywords used included “long term care”, “nursing home”, “research”, “trial”, “challenge” and “barrier”, etc. Resulting references were screened in order to identify relevant studies that reported on challenges derived from first-hand experience of empirical research studies. Challenges were summarized and synthesized.ResultsOf 1723 references, 39 articles were selected for inclusion. To facilitate understanding we proposed a classification framework of 8 main themes to categorize the research challenges presented in the 39 studies, relating to the characteristics of facility/owner/administrator, resident, staff caregiver, family caregiver, investigator, ethical or legal concerns, methodology, and budgetary considerations.ConclusionsConducting research in long-term care facilities is full of challenges which can be categorized into 8 main themes. Investigators should be aware of all these challenges and specifically address them when planning their studies. Stakeholders should be involved from an early stage and flexibility should be built into both the methodology and research budget.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12877-018-0934-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Olanzapine is more efficacious than other standard antiemetics for the rescue of CINV and its inclusion improves control in the prevention setting. Given the possible reduction in side effects, the use of a 5-mg dose of olanzapine should be considered. Future RCTs should compare the 5-mg versus the 10-mg dosages further and report on the efficacy and percentage of patients developing side effects. Further analyses should be done without the influence of corticosteroids.

IntroductionNewborn babies in need of critical medical attention are normally admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). These infants tend to be preterm, have low birth weight, and/or have serious medical conditions. Neonatal survival varies, but progress in perinatal and neonatal care has notably diminished mortality rates. In this selected review, we examine and compare the NICU mortality rates and etiologies of death in different countries.MethodsA literature search was conducted in Ovid MEDLINE, OLDMEDLINE, EMBASE Classic, and EMBASE. The primary endpoint was the mortality rates in NICUs. Secondary endpoints included the reasons for death and the correlation between infant age and mortality outcome. For the main analysis, we examined all infants admitted to NICUs. Subgroup analyses included extremely low birth weight infants (based on the authors’ own definition), very low birth weight infants, very preterm infants, preterm infants, preterm infants with a birth weight of ≤1,500 g, and by developed and developing countries.ResultsThe literature search yielded 1,865 articles, of which 20 were included. The total mortality rates greatly varied among countries. Infants in developed and developing countries had similar ages at death, ranging from 4 to 20 days and 1 to 28.9 days, respectively. The mortality rates ranged from 4 to 46% in developed countries and 0.2 to 64.4% in developing countries.ConclusionThe mortality rates of NICUs vary between nations but remain high in both developing and developed countries.

The existing literature cites both good and bad inter-rater reliability of PS scores. It is difficult to conclude which HCPs' PS assessments are more accurate.

The objective of this study is to compare the differences in quality of life (QoL) as assessed by the QLQ-BN20 and QLQ-C30 in patients with primary and metastatic brain neoplasms. A systematic literature search was conducted over the OvidSP platform in MEDLINE (1980-2012) and EMBASE (1980-2012). Studies in which the QLQ-BN20 was used as a QoL assessment for patients with malignant brain tumors (either metastatic or primary) were included in the study. Articles were included if they reported scores of at least one subscale of the QLQ-C30 or QLQ-BN20. The weighted means of the QLQ-BN20 and QLQ-C30 subscales were calculated based on sample size for included studies. Weighted analysis of variance was conducted to compare these scores in primary and metastatic brain patients. A p-value of < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. A total of 14 studies (16 arms: three brain metastases and 13 primary brain tumors) were identified and included in the data analysis. Fifteen of the 16 arms included QLQ-C30 scores along with QLQ-BN20 scores. Performance status of patients in both cohorts was similar. Patients with primary brain tumors and brain metastases had the following findings: physical functioning (weighted mean: 79.18 vs 74.93), global QoL (61.88 vs 59.44), role functioning (67.37 vs 75.00) and emotional functioning (70.44 vs 71.86); but none of them were statistically significantly different. Only cognitive functioning from the QLQ-C30 was significantly worse in patients with primary brain tumors (p-value = 0.0199). Despite cognitive function being significantly worse in patients with primary brain tumors, patients with metastatic brain tumors and patients with primary brain tumors have very similar QoL profiles. The study is limited by the large discrepancy in cohort sizes (1260 patients with primary brain cancer vs 183 patients with brain metastases) and the lack of clinical data.