BACKGROUND The combination of external-beam radiotherapy and brachytherapy is used commonly to treat men with prostate cancer. In this analysis, the authors examined the rate of biochemical recurrence (BR) and late grade > or =3 genitourinary (GU) and gastrointestinal (GI) toxicity after treatment with external-beam radiotherapy and brachytherapy in a multiinstitutional, cooperative group setti...

OBJECTIVE Resuscitation of critically ill patients requires medical knowledge, clinical skills, and nonmedical skills, or crisis resource management (CRM) skills. There is currently no gold standard for evaluation of CRM performance. The primary objective was to examine the use of high-fidelity simulation as a medium to evaluate CRM performance. Since no gold standard for measuring performance ...

Introduction Miscommunication during inter-unit handoffs between emergency and internal medicine physicians may jeopardize patient safety. Our goal was to evaluate the impact of a structured communication strategy on the quality of admission handoffs. Methods We conducted a mixed-methods, pre-test/post-test study at a 560-bed academic health center with 60,000 emergency department (ED) patien...

Multiple endocrine neoplasias (MEN) are autosomal dominant disorders characterized by the occurrence of tumors in at least two endocrine glands. Two types of MEN syndromes have long been known: MEN type 1 (MEN1) and MEN type 2 (MEN2), associated with a different spectrum of affected organs. MEN1 and MEN2 are caused by germline mutations in the MEN1 tumor suppressor gene and the RET proto-oncoge...

Few risk factors for meningioma, aside from increasing age and female sex, have been identified. We investigated risk factors for meningioma in elderly women, a group with a high incidence. We evaluated associations of demographic, lifestyle, medical history, and anthropometric variables with risk of meningioma in the Iowa Women's Health Study (IWHS), a population-based, prospective cohort stud...

BACKGROUND Vitamin E, an antioxidant, has been investigated for its effect on cancer incidence in humans, but no firm conclusions about a protective effect can be drawn from these studies. Recently, we reported a statistically significant correlation in the Mutatect mouse tumor model between the number of neutrophils and the frequency of mutation at the hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (h...

BACKGROUND Tobacco smoke exposure harms children and adults. Yet, 40% of children worldwide are exposed to tobacco smoke in their homes. Such widespread parental failure to protect children is puzzling, and may be related to risk perceptions. No consensus exists about how to measure parental risk perceptions of tobacco smoke exposure. METHODS The objective of this research was to study Parent...

This report summarizes the results of research conducted by the University of Maryland to validate a method for predicting software quality. The method is termed the Reliability Prediction System (RePS). The RePS methodology was initially presented in NUREG/GR-001 9. The current effort is a preliminary validation of the RePS methodology with respect to its ability to predict software quality (m...

The aim of this study was to provide an increased level of evidence on surgical management of high-tension electrical injuries compared with thermal burns using a case-controlled study design. Sixty-eight patients (64 males, 4 females, aged 33.7 +/- 13 years) with high-tension electrical burns were matched for age, gender, and burnt extent with a cohort of patients sustaining thermal burns. Dat...

for Project # 2002-IJ-CX-0019 Research Goals and Objectives Statement of Purpose: Despite the growth in super-maximum security prisons, no research has systematically assessed the goals, impacts, or costs of these prisons. The purpose of the Urban Institute (UI) research was to help states and correctional systems make informed decisions about investing in supermax prisons, and, specifically, t...