Treatment of endobronchial metastases with intraluminal radiotherapy

AbstractMetastasis to the lung occurs quite commonly from certain types of extrapulmonary primary carcinoma. Spread to the bronchial lumen is relatively rare. When this does occur, symptoms resembling those of primary bronchial carcinoma are often present, in association with partial or complete obstruction of the bronchial lumen. Palliation of such symptoms is possible with the use of intraluminal radiotherapy (ILT). Between 1990 and 1998, 37 patients with endobronchial metastases were treated using this modality; a single fraction of radiation was delivered by the remote afterloading high dose rate microSelectron system. Data regarding these patients' characteristics and outcome are presented, following a retrospective review of case notes.The commonest symptoms were dyspnoea, cough and haemoptysis; the commonest primary tumour sites were breast, colorectum, oesophagus and kidney. Twenty-four (64·9%) patients had some improvement in symptoms following treatment. Mean overall survival was 280 days, range 9–1145 days. No serious adverse effects occurred. ILT is a relatively simple, safe and effective treatment in the palliation of symptoms due to endobronchial metastases

Humoral response of the mouse to Treponema pallidum.

To investigate the development of the humoral immune response of mice to infection with Treponema pallidum, Balb/c and C57Bl mice were injected intradermally with 10 x 10(6) virulent organisms. Serum samples were taken from the mice at weekly intervals after infection and used in the electrophoretic transblotting technique to detect T pallidum and T phagedenis biotype Reiter antigens. The serum samples taken from infected mice at 21, 42, 84, and 126 days after infection recognised two to 15 T pallidum antigens, with a gradual but continual increase in the number of antigens recognised. The same antisera to T pallidum recognised five cross reactive T phagedenis biotype Reiter antigens. Mice injected with 10 x 10(6) heat killed T pallidum organisms failed to recognise T pallidum antigens, as shown by the blotting technique. When mice infected with T pallidum were given antibiotics, the development of the humoral response was interrupted. These experiments indicated that mice respond more slowly than rabbits to T pallidum, which may be because T pallidum is weakly immunogenic in mice

Psychometrics: From practice to theory and back

nonparametric IRT, NIRT, latent unidimensionality, latent multidimensionality, essential unidimensionality, monotone locally independent unidimensional IRT model, MLI1, item pair conditional covariances, DIMTEST, HCA/CCPROX, DETECT, CONCOV, Mokken scaling, generalized compensatory model, approximate simple structure, DIF, differential item functioning, differential bundle functioning DBF, valid subtest, multidimensional model for DIF, MMD, SIBTEST, MultiSIB, Mantel-Haenszel, PolySIB, CrossingSIB, skills diagnosis, formative assessment, Unified Model, reparameterized Bayes Unified Model, MCMC, evidence centered design, ECD, PSAT Score Report Plus,