Toward a Theory of Effective Supranational Adjudication

Supranational adjudication in Europe is a remarkable and surprising success. Europe\u27s two supranational courts -- the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) -- issue dozens of judgments each year with which defending national governments habitually comply in essentially the same manner as they would with domestic court rulings. These experiences stand in striking contrast to those of many international tribunals past and present. Can the European experience of supranational adjudication be transplanted beyond Europe? Professors Helfer and Slaughter argue that the effectiveness of the ECJ and the ECHR is linked to their power to hear claims brought by private parties directly against national governments or against other private parties. Such supranational jurisdiction has allowed the European courts to penetrate the surface of the state, to forge direct relationships not only with individual citizens but also with distinct government institutions such as national courts. Over time, this penetration and the deepening relationships between supranational jurists and domestic legal actors have led to the evolution of a community of law, a web of nominally apolitical relations among subnational and supranational legal actors. The simple provision of supranational jurisdiction, however, is not a guarantee of effective adjudication. Drawing on the observations of scholars, practitioners, and judges, Professors Helfer and Slaughter develop a checklist of factors that enhance the effectiveness of supranational adjudication. They distinguish among those factors that are within the control of member states; those that are within the control of the judges themselves; and those that may be beyond the control of either states or judges. Isolating the factors in this way provides both a rough metric for evaluating the effectiveness of other supranational tribunals and a potential set of prescriptions for judges on those tribunals seeking to enhance their institutions\u27 effectiveness. After developing the checklist, Professors Helfer and Slaughter use it to analyze the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC). Although the UNHRC was established expressly as a committee of experts rather than a court, analysis of its recent practice reveals that it is becoming increasingly court-like. Moreover, within the constraints imposed by severely limited resources, UNHRC members are independently following many of the checklist prescriptions for increased effectiveness. The next step is for the organization to enter into a sustained dialogue with its European counterparts, harmonizing its decisions with theirs in some areas while consciously preserving its own distinctive jurisprudence in others. Structured and regular interaction between these tribunals would add additional voices to an emerging transjudicial conversation, potentially laying the foundation for a global community of law

Effect of Comorbidity on Prostate Cancer-Specific Mortality: A Prospective Observational Study.

Purpose To determine the effect of comorbidity on prostate cancer (PCa)-specific mortality across treatment types. Patients and Methods These are the results of a population-based observational study in Sweden from 1998 to 2012 of 118,543 men who were diagnosed with PCa with a median follow-up of 8.3 years (interquartile range, 5.2 to 11.5 years) until death from PCa or other causes. Patients were categorized by patient characteristics (marital status, educational level) and tumor characteristics (serum prostate-specific antigen, tumor grade and clinical stage) and by treatment type (radical prostatectomy, radical radiotherapy, androgen deprivation therapy, and watchful waiting). Data were stratified by Charlson comorbidity index (0, 1, 2, or ≥ 3). Mortality from PCa and other causes and after stabilized inverse probability weighting adjustments for clinical patient and tumor characteristics and treatment type was determined. Kaplan-Meier estimates and Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to calculate hazard ratios. Results In the complete unadjusted data set, we observed an effect of increased comorbidity on PCa-specific and other-cause mortality. After adjustments for patient and tumor characteristics, the effect of comorbidity on PCa-specific mortality was lost but maintained for other-cause mortality. After additional adjustment for treatment type, we again failed to observe an effect for comorbidity on PCa-specific mortality, although it was maintained for other-cause mortality. Conclusion This large observational study suggests that comorbidity affects other cause-mortality but not PCa-specific- mortality after accounting for patient and tumor characteristics and treatment type. Regardless of radical treatment type (radical prostatectomy or radical radiotherapy), increasing comorbidity does not seem to significantly affect the risk of dying from PCa. Consequently, differences in oncologic outcomes that were observed in population-based comparative effectiveness studies of PCa treatments may not be a result of the varying distribution of comorbidity among treatment groups

Intraductal carcinoma of the prostate: a critical re-appraisal

Intraductal carcinoma of the prostate gland (IDCP), which is now categorised as a distinct entity by WHO 2016, includes two biologically distinct diseases. IDCP associated with invasive carcinoma (IDCP-inv) generally represents a growth pattern of invasive prostatic adenocarcinoma while the rarely encountered pure IDCP is a precursor of prostate cancer. This review highlights issues that require further discussion and clarification. The diagnostic criterion “nuclear size at least 6 times normal” is ambiguous as “size” could refer to either nuclear area or diameter. If area, then this criterion could be re-defined as nuclear diameter at least three times normal as it is difficult to visually compare area of nuclei. It is also unclear whether IDCP could also include tumours with ductal morphology. There is no consensus whether pure IDCP in needle biopsies should be managed with re-biopsy or radical therapy. A pragmatic approach would be to recommend radical therapy only for extensive pure IDCP that is morphologically unequivocal for high-grade prostate cancer. Active surveillance is not appropriate when low-grade invasive cancer is associated with IDCP, as such patients usually have unsampled high-grade prostatic adenocarcinoma. It is generally recommended that IDCP component of IDCP-inv should be included in tumour extent but not grade. However, there are good arguments in favour of grading IDCP associated with invasive cancer. All historical as well as contemporary Gleason outcome data are based on morphology and would have included an associated IDCP component in the tumour grade. WHO 2016 recommends that IDCP should not be graded, but it is unclear whether this applies to both pure IDCP and IDCP-inv

Biomarkers in renal cancer

Treatment options for primary and metastatic renal cancer are increasing. Accurate data from the pathological examination of renal cancer specimens aid clinicians in stratifying patients for surveillance and adjuvant therapies. This review focuses on biomarkers in diagnosis, prognosis and prediction of the biologic behavior of renal tumors which should be recorded in pathology reports and which are under investigation. Special emphasis is given to the use of immunohistochemical markers in differential diagnosis of various renal tumor subtypes. The relevance of cytogenetic and molecular findings is also discussed. The review includes the 2012 International Society for Urological Pathology Consensus conference recommendations

OpenPhi: an interface to access Philips iSyntax whole slide images for computational pathology

Digital pathology enables applying computational methods, such as deep learning, in pathology for improved diagnostics and prognostics, but lack of interoperability between whole slide image formats of different scanner vendors is a challenge for algorithm developers. We present OpenPhi-Open PatHology Interface, an Application Programming Interface for seamless access to the iSyntax format used by the Philips Ultra Fast Scanner, the first digital pathology scanner approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration. OpenPhi is extensible and easily interfaced with existing vendor-neutral applications

OpenPhi : An interface to access Philips iSyntax whole slide images for computational pathology

publishedVersionNon peer reviewe

Бузук Георгий Николаевич

юбилеиученыеВРАЧ

Detection of perineural invasion in prostate needle biopsies with deep neural networks

The presence of perineural invasion (PNI) by carcinoma in prostate biopsies has been shown to be associated with poor prognosis. The assessment and quantification of PNI are, however, labor intensive. To aid pathologists in this task, we developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm based on deep neural networks. We collected, digitized, and pixel-wise annotated the PNI findings in each of the approximately 80,000 biopsy cores from the 7406 men who underwent biopsy in a screening trial between 2012 and 2014. In total, 485 biopsy cores showed PNI. We also digitized more than 10% (n = 8318) of the PNI negative biopsy cores. Digitized biopsies from a random selection of 80% of the men were used to build the AI algorithm, while 20% were used to evaluate its performance. For detecting PNI in prostate biopsy cores, the AI had an estimated area under the receiver operating characteristics curve of 0.98 (95% CI 0.97–0.99) based on 106 PNI positive cores and 1652 PNI negative cores in the independent test set. For a pre-specified operating point, this translates to sensitivity of 0.87 and specificity of 0.97. The corresponding positive and negative predictive values were 0.67 and 0.99, respectively. The concordance of the AI with pathologists, measured by mean pairwise Cohen’s kappa (0.74), was comparable to inter-pathologist concordance (0.68 to 0.75). The proposed algorithm detects PNI in prostate biopsies with acceptable performance. This could aid pathologists by reducing the number of biopsies that need to be assessed for PNI and by highlighting regions of diagnostic interest.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Detection of perineural invasion in prostate needle biopsies with deep neural networks

The presence of perineural invasion (PNI) by carcinoma in prostate biopsies has been shown to be associated with poor prognosis. The assessment and quantification of PNI are, however, labor intensive. To aid pathologists in this task, we developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm based on deep neural networks. We collected, digitized, and pixel-wise annotated the PNI findings in each of the approximately 80,000 biopsy cores from the 7406 men who underwent biopsy in a screening trial between 2012 and 2014. In total, 485 biopsy cores showed PNI. We also digitized more than 10% (n = 8318) of the PNI negative biopsy cores. Digitized biopsies from a random selection of 80% of the men were used to build the AI algorithm, while 20% were used to evaluate its performance. For detecting PNI in prostate biopsy cores, the AI had an estimated area under the receiver operating characteristics curve of 0.98 (95% CI 0.97-0.99) based on 106 PNI positive cores and 1652 PNI negative cores in the independent test set. For a pre-specified operating point, this translates to sensitivity of 0.87 and specificity of 0.97. The corresponding positive and negative predictive values were 0.67 and 0.99, respectively. The concordance of the AI with pathologists, measured by mean pairwise Cohen's kappa (0.74), was comparable to inter-pathologist concordance (0.68 to 0.75). The proposed algorithm detects PNI in prostate biopsies with acceptable performance. This could aid pathologists by reducing the number of biopsies that need to be assessed for PNI and by highlighting regions of diagnostic interest.</p