Introduction Our aim was to investigate the added prognostic value of a patient-reported functional outcome score over Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS) in patients with non-small-cell lung cancers (NSCLC) with brain metastases. Materials and methods The baseline data are from a prospective cohort study involving 140 consecutive patients presenting at our institute. A patient reported perfor...

BACKGROUND For over 60 years, the Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS) has proven itself a valuable tool with which to perform measurement of and comparison between the functional statuses of individual patients. In recent decades conditions for patients have changed, and so too has the KPS undergone several adjustments since its initial development. DISCUSSION The most important works regardin...

The type 1 Boston Keratoprosthesis preparation requires a 3-mm central punch and an 8.5 mm or larger punch in the carrier tissue. These punches are ideally concentric, but we have found difficulty in achieving concentric punches when the larger punch is performed first. We present a modification in the preparation procedure to help minimize centration error.

BACKGROUND Artificial cornea transplantation, keratoprosthesis, improves vision for patients at high risk of failure with human cadaveric cornea. However, post-operative infection can cause visual loss and implant extrusion in 3.2-17% of eyes. Long-term vancomycin drops are recommended following keratoprosthesis to prevent bacterial keratitis. Evidence, though, in support of this practice is po...

BACKGROUND We aimed to investigate the relationship between medical decisional capacity (MDC) and Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS) in adults with malignant brain tumors. METHODS Participants were 71 adults with primary (n = 26) or metastatic (n = 45) brain tumors. Testing to determine KPS scores and MDC was performed as close together as possible for each patient. Participants were administ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the use and complications of a penetrating keratoprosthesis implantation in the management of corneal opacification in dogs. METHODS A retrospective clinical study describes the indications for the surgical technique utilized and the outcomes of this procedure in 20 eyes of 19 dogs with blindness of corneal origin. A successful surgical outcome was defined as a clear ker...

BACKGROUND The Karnofsky Performance Status (KPS) is a gold standard scale. The Thorne-modified KPS (TKPS) focuses on community-based care and has been shown to be more relevant to palliative care settings than the original KPS. The Australia-modified KPS (AKPS) blends KPS and TKPS to accommodate any setting of care. METHODS Performance status was measured using all three scales for palliativ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Although thrombolytic therapy (recombinant tissue plasminogen activator [rtPA]) represents an important step forward in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) management, there is a clear need to identify high-risk patients. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of quantitative permeability (KPS) MR imaging in patients with AIS treated with and without rtPA. We hypot...

Knowledge Portals (KPs) are highly integrative Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) that promise to synthesize widely dispersed knowledge and to interconnect individuals in order to provide a ‘one-stop knowledge shop’. Yet, KPs face major challenges in practice, as the intricacies of knowledge exchange are subject to varied individual and social factors. At the same time, growing anecdotal eviden...

Efficient ID-based key sharing schemes are desired worldwide for secure communications on Internet and other networks. The Key Predistribution Systems (KPSs) are a large class of such key sharing schemes. The remarkable property of KPSs is that in order to share the key, a participant should only input its partner’s identifier to its secret KPS algorithm. Although it has many advantages in term...