Adjuvant chemotherapy in elderly patients with breast cancer: a survey of the Breast International Group (BIG).

BACKGROUND: To collect oncologists' experience and opinion on adjuvant chemotherapy in elderly breast cancer patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A questionnaire was circulated among the members of the Breast International Group. RESULTS: A total of 277 oncologists from 28 countries participated in the survey. Seventy years is the age cut-off commonly used to define a patient as elderly. Biological age and the biological characteristics of the tumor are the most frequently used criteria to propose adjuvant chemotherapy to an elderly patient. Combination therapy with cyclophosphamide, methotrexate and fluorouracil on days 1 and 8 is the most frequently prescribed regimen. Great interest exists in oral chemotherapy. CONCLUSION: There is interest among those who responded to the survey to validate a comprehensive geriatric assessment for use as a predictive instrument of toxicity and/or activity of anticancer therapy and to evaluate the role of a treatment option that is potentially less toxic and possibly as effective as polychemotherapy.

Heavy metals in the asteroid Asterias rubens and its prey Mytilus edulis: Seasonal and geographical variations in four selected North Sea biotopes

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Bone fractures among postmenopausal patients with endocrine-responsive early breast cancer treated with 5 years of letrozole or tamoxifen in the BIG 1-98 trial.

To compare the incidence and timing of bone fractures in postmenopausal women treated with 5 years of adjuvant tamoxifen or letrozole for endocrine-responsive early breast cancer in the Breast International Group (BIG) 1-98 trial.

Supercontinuum Generation by Stimulated Raman Scattering and Parametric Four-Wave Mixing in Photonic Crystal Fibers

Supercontinuum generation is investigated experimentally and numerically in a highly nonlinear indexguiding photonic crystal optical fiber in a regime in which self-phase modulation of the pump wave makes a negligible contribution to spectral broadening. An ultrabroadband octave-spanning white-light continuum is generated with 60-ps pump pulses of subkilowatt peak power. The primary mechanism of spectral broadening is identified as the combined action of stimulated Raman scattering and parametric four-wave mixing. The observation of a strong anti-Stokes Raman component reveals the importance of the coupling between stimulated Raman scattering and parametric four-wave mixing in highly nonlinear photonic crystal fibers and also indicates that non-phase-matched processes contribute to the continuum. Additionally, the pump input polarization affects the generated continuum through the influence of polarization modulational instability. The experimental results are in good agreement with detailed numerical simulations. These findings demonstrate the importance of index-guiding photonic crystal fibers for the design of picosecond and nanosecond supercontinuum light sources. © 2002 Optical Society of America.