Structuring the pre-search reference interview: a useful technique for handling clinical questions*

Objectives: To explore whether structuring a literature search request form according to an evidence-based medicine (EBM) anatomy elicits more information, improves precision of search results, and is acceptable to participating librarians.

A distribution of tumor size at detection and its limiting form.

A distribution of tumor size at detection is derived within the framework of a mechanistic model of carcinogenesis with the object of estimating biologically meaningful parameters of tumor latency. Its limiting form appears to be a generalization of the distribution that arises in the length-biased sampling from stationary point processes. The model renders the associated estimation problems tractable. The usefulness of the proposed approach is illustrated with an application to clinical data on premenopausal breast cancer.