Changes in patterns of practice for prostate cancer radiotherapy in Italy 1995-2003. A survey of the Prostate Cancer Study Group of the Italian Radiation Oncology Society.

Aims and background. In 2002, a survey including 1759 patients treated from 1980 to 1998 established a "benchmark" Italian data source for prostate cancer radiotherapy. This report updates the previous one. Methods. Data on clinical management and outcomes of 3001 patients treated in 15 centers from 1999 through 2003 were analyzed and compared with those of the previous survey. Results. Significant differences in clinical management (-10% had abdominal ma-gnetic resonance imaging; +26% received ≥70 Gy, +48% conformal radiotherapy, -20% pelvic radiotherapy) and in G3-4 toxicity rates (-3.8%) were recorded. Actuarial 5-year overall, disease-specific, clinical relapse-free, and biochemical relapse-free survival rates were 88%, 96%, 96% and 88%, respectively. At multivariate analysis, D'Amico risk categories significantly impacted on all the outcomes; higher radiotherapy doses were significantly related with better overall survival rates, and a similar trend was evident for disease-specific and biochemical relapse-free survival; cumulative probability of 5-year late G1-4 toxicity was 24.8% and was significantly related to higher radiotherapy doses (P <0.001). Conclusions. The changing patterns of practice described seem related to an improvement in efficacy and safety of radiotherapy for prostate cancer. However, the impact of the new radiotherapy techniques should be prospectively evaluated.

[Horace] Van Ruith (81 ans) travaillant au tableau de Miss Cavell : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 56988

Meropenem versus imipenem-cilastatin in intraabdominal infections requiring surgery

In a multicentre, open, randomised study, the efficacy and tolerability of intravenous meropenem (1 g every 8 h, infusion or bolus) was compared with that of intravenous imipenem/cilastatin (1 g every 8 h, infusion) in 232 hospitalised patients with moderate to severe intra-abdominal infections. At the end of therapy, a satisfactory clinical response (cure or improvement) was seen in 79/82 (96%) evaluable meropenem patients and 83/88 (94%) imipenem/cilastatin patients; this was still seen at follow-up (57/63; 90% and 58/66; 88%, respectively). A satisfactory bacteriological response (elimination or presumed elimination) was seen in 69/82 (84%) meropenem patients and 71/88 (81%) imipenem/cilastatin patients at the end of therapy and in 52/62 (84%) and 55/70 (79%), respectively, at follow-up, There was a high level of clinical cure or improvement(95% for both treatment groups) in the 120 patients (60 in each group) who had polymicrobial infections. <p>A similar incidence of adverse events was seen in each group: 45/116 patients in the meropenem group (72 events) and 42/116 patients in the imipenem/cilastatin group (65 events); the adverse event profiles were also similar, with injection site inflammation and elevated transaminases the most frequent in both groups. The results of this study indicate that monotherapy with meropenem was as effective and as well tolerated as the combination of imipenem/cilastatin in the treatment of moderate to severe intra-abdominal infections.

Immunoscintigraphy with antigranulocyte monoclonal antibodies for the diagnosis of septic loosening of hip prostheses.

To determine the value of immunoscintigraphy (IS) with antigranulocyte monoclonal antibodies (Mab) in the diagnosis of subacute or chronic infection of hip prostheses, we prospectively studied 57 patients (23 women and 34 men; age 29-92 years, mean 72.7 years) sent to our institution in the past 6 years for clinical suspicion of septic loosening of a hip prosthesis. Nineteen patients had bilateral prostheses and one of them was studied twice. A total of 78 prostheses were examined. All patients had three-phase bone scans followed by IS with technetium-99m antigranulocyte Mab BW 250/183. Intervals between bone scans and IS varied from 2 days to 4 weeks. Final diagnosis was assessed by culture in 48 cases (articular puncture or intraoperative sampling) and by clinical follow-up of at least 8 months in 30 cases. Twelve prostheses were considered septic and 66 non-septic. The overall sensitivity and specificity were 92% and 64% respectively for bone scans, 67% and 75% for IS and 67% and 84% for both modalities together. In three cases, IS was doubtful and the final clinical diagnosis was negative for infection. False-positive results were observed in the presence of massive loosening of the prosthesis or in association with metaplastic peri-articular bone formation. In three of the four false-negative results, infection was proven only after enrichment of the culture, and the bacterium was Staphylococcus epidermidis. In 12/33 (36%) positive bone scans IS allowed the diagnosis of infection to be excluded. Overall accuracy of both modalities together was 81% and the negative predictive value was 93%, which compares favourably with the results reported for other non-invasive methods.

Greenberg i Danto : De l'últim gran relat a la fi de l'art

A partir de l'anàlisi comparatiu de l'obra de dos grans teòrics de la modernitat i la postmodernitat com són Clement Greenberg i Arthur C. Danto es fa un estudi de com aquests dos autors han arribat a construir els seus discursos i, en relació a això, com ha anat evolucionant el concepte d'art de la modernitat a la postmodernitat. La qüestió central que se'ns planteja és: què ha canviat en la idea d'art de la postmodernitat respecte a la idea o a la concepció d'art anterior, per arribar-nos a qüestionar si realment hi ha art i, si n'hi ha, què és art i que no ho és? Existeix una idea universal de què ha de ser art? O aquesta és una qüestió intrínsicament relacionada amb la societat en què es produeix; en aquest cas, la societat occidental?

'Les relacions entre la Unió Europea i els països de la conca del Mediterrani' : Barcelona, 24-28 de novembre de 1995

An Alternative Mediterranean Conference under the auspices of several NGOs frorn several countries of the Mediterranean basin was held in Barcelona from 24th to 26th Novernber 1995. Its purpose was to discuss the relationships arnong the European Union and the eastern and southern shore countries in the Mediterranean basin from a non-official point of view, and to evaluate the project of a Euro-Mediterranean Association which was to be launched by the Intergovernmental Euro-Mediterranean Conference at its meeting in Barcelona on 27th and 28th November. This Serninar was the focus of most discussion at the Alternative Mediterranean Conference

Iowa Civil Rights Commission Annual Report, 1995

Annual report for the Iowa Civil Rights Commission

Art painting Data Collection

The classification of Art painting images is a computer vision applications that isgrowing considerably. The goal of this technology, is to classify an art paintingimage automatically, in terms of artistic style, technique used, or its author. For thispurpose, the image is analyzed extracting some visual features. Many articlesrelated with these problems have been issued, but in general the proposed solutionsare focused in a very specific field. In particular, algorithms are tested using imagesat different resolutions, acquired under different illumination conditions. Thatmakes complicate the performance comparison of the different methods. In thiscontext, it will be very interesting to construct a public art image database, in orderto compare all the existing algorithms under the same conditions. This paperpresents a large art image database, with their corresponding labels according to thefollowing characteristics: title, author, style and technique. Furthermore, a tool thatmanages this database have been developed, and it can be used to extract differentvisual features for any selected image. This data can be exported to a file in CSVformat, allowing researchers to analyze the data with other tools. During the datacollection, the tool stores the elapsed time in the calculation. Thus, this tool alsoallows to compare the efficiency, in computation time, of different mathematicalprocedures for extracting image data.