Music as an educative enrichment medium for the remediation of children with reading problems

Bibliography: leaves 168-172.The primary focus of this dissertation was work with a group of children who were experiencing problems in reading and to formulate strategies which incorporates an innovative approach using music. Many learning problems encountered today could be avoided if children's earliest backgrounds were rich in songs, poems set to music, nursery rhymes and musical games. It is necessary for a child to experience rhythm in every possible way to enable him to read with a flowing rhythm and a pleasant intonation. A child must be able to feel and experience the rhythm of the spoken word by repeating rhymes, phrases, chanting children's names, for example. This is done by tapping the word, using body movements (clapping, stamping) and transferring this rhythm to percussion instruments while experiencing the speech rhythm. Many approaches have been used with children who are disabled readers and none use music as a tool. The progress of these children has therefore been slow, tedious and not always successful. Music has not been used before as an approach to assist children with reading disabilities. In this dissertation it has been proved that music helps children overcome their reading problems, as it is the only approach which offers total involvement of the child and therefore the best results are achieved. All children involved in the research enjoyed the activities and derived great pleasure from performing them unaware that the process of remediation was taking place

Being active supports client control over health care

The purpose of this study was to identify how healthcare clients achieve and maintain a sense of control over their health. The literature review conducted refers to: (i) key definitions of control, (ii) locus of control, and (iii) control and wellbeing. Participants with a range of acute and chronic health conditions and who had been hospitalised at some point were selected for the study. Symbolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969) and modified grounded theory of Strauss & Corbin (1998) provided the frameworks for this study. During the six month study period, data were collected from sixty participants and included interviews, participant observation, reviewing participants' records (nursing care plans, nursing notes and case histories), the nursing units' philosophy, organisational charts, policies and procedures, annual reports, consumer brochures and any other relevant information sources. Findings from the study indicated that participants moved from feeling vulnerable to having a sense of control through to being purposefully active. Vulnerability was associated with: (i) having limited choices in respect to their health, (ii) lacking adequate health information to make choices, (iii) being ignored by health providers with respect to their needs, and (iv) lacking friend/family supports. Purposefully activating was associated with three major categories: (i) reflecting, (ii) being self-determiningly involved and (iii) normalising. Findings from this study could be used by health care clients who want a sense of control over their health care, and also by health care providers who wish to support clients in the healthcare process.C

Radiotherapy for Soft Tissue Sarcoma of the Proximal Lower Extremity

Soft-tissue sarcoma (STS) is a histopathologically diverse group of tumors accounting for approximately 10,000 new malignancies in the US each year. The proximal lower extremity is the most common site for STS, accounting for approximately one-third of all cases. Coordinated multimodality management in the form of surgery and radiation is often critical to local control, limb preservation, and functional outcome. Based on a review of currently available Medline literature and professional experience, this paper provides an overview of the treatment of STS of the lower extremity with a particular focus on the modern role of radiotherapy

The importance of material used in speech therapy : two case studies in minimally conscious state patients

Speech therapy can be part of the care pathway for patients recovering from comas and presenting a disorder of consciousness (DOC). Although there are no official recommendations for speech therapy follow-up, neuroscientific studies suggest that relevant stimuli may have beneficial effects on the behavioral assessment of patients with a DOC. In two case studies, we longitudinally measured (from 4 to 6 weeks) the behavior (observed in a speech therapy session or using items from the Coma Recovery Scale—Revised) of two patients in a minimally conscious state (MCS) when presenting music and/or autobiographical materials. The results highlight the importance of using relevant material during a speech therapy session and suggest that a musical context with a fast tempo could improve behavior evaluation compared to noise. This work supports the importance of adapted speech therapy for MCS patients and encourages larger studies to confirm these initial observations

Response to radiation in renal medullary carcinoma

Renal medullary carcinoma (RMC) is a rare and highly aggressive malignancy arising from the renal medulla and found mostly in patients with sickle cell trait. RMC usually presents with widely metastatic disease. We describe a young man diagnosed with metastatic RMC who sustained a complete response to systemic chemotherapy but developed brain metastases with leptomeningeal involvement and subsequently had a partial response to brain irradiation. The use of radiation in the management of RMC is reviewed. Due to the apparent propensity for RMC to spread to the central nervous system, prophylactic treatment such as craniospinal irradiation should be considered along with chemotherapy in patients with metastatic RMC to potentially improve the progression-free interval

Survivin a radiogenetic promoter for glioblastoma viral gene therapy independently from CArG motifs

BACKGROUND: Radiogenetic therapy is a novel approach in the treatment of cancer, which employs genetic modification to alter the sensitivity of tumor cells to the effect of applied radiation. AIM: To select a potent radiation inducible promoter in the context of brain tumors and to investigate if CArG radio responsive motifs or other elements in the promoter nucleotide sequences can correlate to its response to radiation. METHODS: To select initial candidates for promoter inducible elements, the levels of mRNA expression of six different promoters were assessed using Quantitative RTPCR in D54 MG cells before and after radiation exposure. Recombinant Ad/reporter genes driven by five different promoters; CMV, VEGF, FLT-1, DR5 and survivin were constructed. Glioma cell lines were infected with different multiplicity of infection of the (promoter) Ad or CMV Ad. Cells were then exposed to a range of radiation (0–12 Gy) at single fraction. Fluorescent microscopy, Luc assay and X-gal staining was used to detect the level of expression of related genes. Different glioma cell lines and normal astrocytes were infected with Ad survivin and exposed to radiation. The promoters were analyzed for presence of CArG radio-responsive motifs and CCAAT box consensus using NCBI blast bioinformatics software. RESULTS: Radiotherapy increases the expression of gene expression by 1.25–2.5 fold in different promoters other than survivin after 2 h of radiation. RNA analysis was done and has shown an increase in copy number of tenfold for survivin. Most importantly cells treated with RT and Ad Luc driven by survivin promoter showed a fivefold increase in expression after 2 Gy of radiation in comparison to non-irradiated cells. Presence or absence of CArG motifs did not correlate with promoter response to radiation. Survivin with the best response to radiation had the lowest number of CCAAT box. CONCLUSION: Survivin is a selective potent radiation inducible promoter for glioblastoma viral gene therapy and this response to radiation could be independent of CArG motifs

Regular rhythmic primes improve sentence repetition in children with developmental language disorder

Recently reported links between rhythm and grammar processing have opened new perspectives for using rhythm in clinical interventions for children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Previous research using the rhythmic priming paradigm has shown improved performance on language tasks after regular rhythmic primes compared to control conditions. However, this research has been limited to effects of rhythmic priming on grammaticality judgments. The current study investigated whether regular rhythmic primes could also benefit sentence repetition, a task requiring proficiency in complex syntax—an area of difficultly for children with DLD. Regular rhythmic primes improved sentence repetition performance compared to irregular rhythmic primes in children with DLD and with typical development—an effect that did not occur with a non-linguistic control task. These findings suggest processing overlap for musical rhythm and linguistic syntax, with implications for the use of rhythmic stimulation for treatment of children with DLD in clinical research and practice

Diagnosing growth in low-grade gliomas with and without longitudinal volume measurements: A retrospective observational study.

BACKGROUND: Low-grade gliomas cause significant neurological morbidity by brain invasion. There is no universally accepted objective technique available for detection of enlargement of low-grade gliomas in the clinical setting; subjective evaluation by clinicians using visual comparison of longitudinal radiological studies is the gold standard. The aim of this study is to determine whether a computer-assisted diagnosis (CAD) method helps physicians detect earlier growth of low-grade gliomas. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We reviewed 165 patients diagnosed with grade 2 gliomas, seen at the University of Alabama at Birmingham clinics from 1 July 2017 to 14 May 2018. MRI scans were collected during the spring and summer of 2018. Fifty-six gliomas met the inclusion criteria, including 19 oligodendrogliomas, 26 astrocytomas, and 11 mixed gliomas in 30 males and 26 females with a mean age of 48 years and a range of follow-up of 150.2 months (difference between highest and lowest values). None received radiation therapy. We also studied 7 patients with an imaging abnormality without pathological diagnosis, who were clinically stable at the time of retrospective review (14 May 2018). This study compared growth detection by 7 physicians aided by the CAD method with retrospective clinical reports. The tumors of 63 patients (56 + 7) in 627 MRI scans were digitized, including 34 grade 2 gliomas with radiological progression and 22 radiologically stable grade 2 gliomas. The CAD method consisted of tumor segmentation, computing volumes, and pointing to growth by the online abrupt change-of-point method, which considers only past measurements. Independent scientists have evaluated the segmentation method. In 29 of the 34 patients with progression, the median time to growth detection was only 14 months for CAD compared to 44 months for current standard of care radiological evaluation (p \u3c 0.001). Using CAD, accurate detection of tumor enlargement was possible with a median of only 57% change in the tumor volume as compared to a median of 174% change of volume necessary to diagnose tumor growth using standard of care clinical methods (p \u3c 0.001). In the radiologically stable group, CAD facilitated growth detection in 13 out of 22 patients. CAD did not detect growth in the imaging abnormality group. The main limitation of this study was its retrospective design; nevertheless, the results depict the current state of a gold standard in clinical practice that allowed a significant increase in tumor volumes from baseline before detection. Such large increases in tumor volume would not be permitted in a prospective design. The number of glioma patients (n = 56) is a limitation; however, it is equivalent to the number of patients in phase II clinical trials. CONCLUSIONS: The current practice of visual comparison of longitudinal MRI scans is associated with significant delays in detecting growth of low-grade gliomas. Our findings support the idea that physicians aided by CAD detect growth at significantly smaller volumes than physicians using visual comparison alone. This study does not answer the questions whether to treat or not and which treatment modality is optimal. Nonetheless, early growth detection sets the stage for future clinical studies that address these questions and whether early therapeutic interventions prolong survival and improve quality of life

Expert consensus on re-irradiation for current glioma

Source at http://doi.org/10.1186/s13014-017-0928-3Purpose:To investigate radiation oncologists’ opinions on important considerations to offering re-irradiation (re-RT) as a treatment option for recurrent glioma.Materials and methods:A survey was conducted with 13 radiation oncologists involved in the care of central nervous system tumor patients. The survey was comprised of 49 questions divided into 2 domains: a demographic section (10 questions) and a case section (5 re-RT cases with 5 to 6 questions representing one or several re-RT treatment dilemmas as may be encountered in the clinic). Respondents were asked to rate the relevance of various factors to offering re-RT, respond to the cases with a decision to offer re-RT vs. not, volume to be treated, margins to be employed, dose/fractionation suggested and any additional comments with respect to rationale in each scenario.Results:Sixty nine percent of responders have been practicing for greater than 10 years and 61% have re-RT 20 to 100 patients to date, with 54% seeing 2–5 re-RT cases per month and retreating 1–2 patients per month. Recurrent tumor volume, time since previous radiation therapy, previously administered dose to organs at risk and patient performance status were rated by the majority of responders (85%, 92%, 77%, and 69% respectively) as extremely relevant or very relevant to offering re-RT as an option.Conclusion:The experts’ practice of re-RT is still heterogeneous, reflecting the paucity of high-quality prospective data available for decision-making. Nevertheless, practicing radiation oncologists can support own decisions by referring to the cases found suitable for re-RT in this survey