Quality of Life Domains in Breast Cancer Survivors: The Relationship Between Importance and Satisfaction Ratings

Objectives: Quality of life (QoL) has been the focus of increasing interest in oncology. QoL assessment instruments implicitly assume that each QoL domain has the same meaning for each patient. The objective of this study was to analyze the importance of and the satisfaction with QoL domains and to analyze the relationship between the two. Methods: A sample of 308 breast cancer survivors was examined twice with a three-month time interval. The women completed the two QoL questionnaires Questions of Life Satisfaction (FLZ-M), which measures participants’ satisfaction with eight QoL domains and the subjective importance of those domains to them, and the EORTC QLQ-C30. A sample of 1,143 women from the general population served as controls. Results: Compared with the general population sample, the patients were less satisfied with their health andmore satisfied with all other QoL domains. The subjective importance of health was lower in the patients’ sample (Effect size: d = 0.38). Satisfaction with health and importance of health were slightly positively correlated (r between 0.05 and 0.08). The effect of QoL domain importance on general QoL was small (beta between −0.05 and 0.11), and interaction effects between domain importance and satisfaction on the prediction of global QoL were negligible. Conclusion: In addition to satisfaction with QoL dimensions, the subjective importance of these dimensions is relevant for psychooncological research and treatment. Health is not the only relevant QoL domain in breast cancer survivors, other domains such as finances also deserve health care providers’ attention

Longer and better lives for patients with atrial fibrillation:the 9th AFNET/EHRA consensus conference

Aims: Recent trial data demonstrate beneficial effects of active rhythm management in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) and support the concept that a low arrhythmia burden is associated with a low risk of AF-related complications. The aim of this document is to summarize the key outcomes of the 9th AFNET/EHRA Consensus Conference of the Atrial Fibrillation NETwork (AFNET) and the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA). Methods and results: Eighty-three international experts met in Münster for 2 days in September 2023. Key findings are as follows: (i) Active rhythm management should be part of the default initial treatment for all suitable patients with AF. (ii) Patients with device-detected AF have a low burden of AF and a low risk of stroke. Anticoagulation prevents some strokes and also increases major but non-lethal bleeding. (iii) More research is needed to improve stroke risk prediction in patients with AF, especially in those with a low AF burden. Biomolecules, genetics, and imaging can support this. (iv) The presence of AF should trigger systematic workup and comprehensive treatment of concomitant cardiovascular conditions. (v) Machine learning algorithms have been used to improve detection or likely development of AF. Cooperation between clinicians and data scientists is needed to leverage the potential of data science applications for patients with AF. Conclusions: Patients with AF and a low arrhythmia burden have a lower risk of stroke and other cardiovascular events than those with a high arrhythmia burden. Combining active rhythm control, anticoagulation, rate control, and therapy of concomitant cardiovascular conditions can improve the lives of patients with AF

Die Bibliothek als Erfolgsfaktor:

Im Jahr 2012 konnte die Universitätsbibliothek ihr 50. Jubiläum feiern. Aus diesem Anlass hat die Bibliothek eine Festschrift herausgegeben. Es findet keine Rückschau auf die Vergangenheit statt. Hingegen wird in drei Themenbereichen "Die Universitätsbibliothek - professionelle Partnerin für Lehre , Studium und Forschung", "Innovationen für die campusweiten Dienstleistungen der Universitätsbibliothek" und "Ein scharfes Profil für die Ruhr-Universität Bochum - der Beitrag der Universitätsbibliothek" auf die Rolle und Funktion der Universitätsbibliothek Bochum bis hin zu aktuellen Veränderungen bei Arbeitsabläufen in der Universitätsbibliothek im Jahr 2012 eingegangen

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Privatisierung : schlägt das Pendel zurück?

Tagungsband zur 19. Jahrestagung der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Verwaltungswissenschaften (SGVW) am 3. Juli 2003 in Winterthur

Cooperative Visual Mapping in a Heterogeneous Team of Mobile Robots

Abstract — Mapping is regarded as one of the most fundamental tasks for mobile robots. In this work, we present an approach that enables multiple resource-limited mobile robots to cooperatively build an image-based map of the environment and to afterwards localize in it. To achieve this, we deploy a hierarchical team of mobile robots. A parent robot possesses state-of-the-art sensors, computation power and acts as a leader. It teleoperates small child robots within its line-of-sight. In contrast to other approaches and due to the cooperation among the robots, we can relax the requirement that every robot must be able to self-localize to take part in multi-robot mapping. Additionally, our algorithm ensures the mapping of the entire area in an efficient way, i.e., it fulfills the requirements of area coverage. To test our approach, extensive experiments have been performed both in simulation and real-world. In the latter case, a team of four heterogeneous mobile robots was deployed. Besides the successful cooperation in the robot team, localization results are presented to validate the applicability of the proposed mapping procedure. I

Experiments on Formation Switching for Mobile Robots

Abstract — In this paper, we address the problem of distributed role assignment for multiple mobile robots. This problem arises when a mobile robot in the team must decide what role to take on in a desired formation configuration. In some applications, in which the center and the orientation of a desired formation are not predetermined, the rotation and translation of the formation can be computed by using average consensus protocols. However, the conflict arises when the same role is assigned to more than one robot. This problem is resolved by using a negotiation strategy, while each assigned robot is traveling to the target position. We evaluate our proposed framework through two experiments on a team of physical nonholonomic mobile robots, i.e., (i) robots reconfigure themselves from one formation to another, and (ii) formation switching happens, while each robot is following a reference path. I