The prognosis of patients with biliary cancers is poor. Although surgery is potentially curative in selected patients, local recurrence is a common pattern of failure. Adjuvant or neoadjuvant radiation therapy improves local control and possibly survival. In locally advanced patients, radiation therapy provides palliation and may prolong survival. Concurrently administered chemotherapy may furt...

BACKGROUND Recent clinical trials have questioned the necessity of breast radiation therapy for older women with early breast cancer. However, the effectiveness of radiation therapy for older women in the community setting has not been addressed. METHODS We used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicare database from January 1, 1992, through December 31, 1999, to identif...

The Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) together with Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) improves radiation therapy for head and neck cancer. On the one hand tumors can be better covered with radiation dose and on the other hand normal tissue can be better preserved. Carefully applied this leads to the same tumor control rate with reduced toxicity compared with conventional radiatio...

BACKGROUND Rural populations have limited geographic access to radiation therapy. The current study examines whether rural patients with cancer are less likely than urban patients with cancer to receive recommended radiation therapy, and identifies factors influencing rural versus urban differences in radiation therapy receipt. METHODS The current study included 14,692 rural and 107,834 urban...

The aim of this study was to investigate the radioprotective effect of thymol as a natural product against salivary glands dysfunction induced by ionizing radiation in rats. The rats were treated with thymol at dose of 50 mg/Kg before exposure to radiation at dose 15Gy. Salivary gland function was evaluated with radioisotope scintigraphy and then salivary gland to background counts ratio was ca...

The present retrospective study was designed to analyze factors with prognostic values a) within, and b) significantly associated with, short-term (12months or less) and long-term (more than 24 months) survival times, i n 72 consecutive patients treated for malignant gliomas. Among 41 (57%) short-term surviving patients, the absence of both aphasia and motor deficit (as initial presenting ...

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE This Medical Policy provides assistance in interpreting UnitedHealthcare benefit plans. When deciding coverage, the enrollee specific document must be referenced. The terms of an enrollee's document (e.g., Certificate of Coverage (COC) or Summary Plan Description (SPD) and Medicaid State Contracts) may differ greatly from the standard benefit plans upon which this Medical P...