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Background Colorectal cancer is the third most common site of malignancy in the Philippines. This has led the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), an attached agency of the Philippine Department of Health, to create the Z-Package Colorectal Cancer Benefit Program to fund the treatment of Filipinos with stage I-III colorectal cancer. This program intends to provide quality care through a multidisciplinary team approach to optimize treatment outcomes for this disease without causing financial toxicity on the part of the patients. The University of the Philippines - Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH) is the pilot site of this program. This is the first study to report data from the colorectal cancer Z-package program. Methods Three-year data from patients enrolled under the Z-Package Colorectal Cancer Benefit Program from 2016 to 2018 were reviewed by the UP-PGH colorectal cancer study group. Descriptive statistics and Cox proportional hazards regression were employed to summarize patient characteristics and analyze treatment outcomes. Results A total of 251 patients were enrolled in the Z-package Benefit Program from 2016 to 2018. The mean age at enrolment was 57 years old. 66% of patients were males. 78% of patients had rectal cancer and 82% were diagnosed with Stage 3 disease. Compliance to the prescribed surgery, chemotherapy, and/or radiation treatment were 90%, 77%, and 96% respectively. Recurrence, morbidity, and mortality rates of enrolled patients from 2016-2018 were 17%, 22%, and 19%, respectively. Morbidities were mostly due to chemotherapy. Patients in this program had a 2-year survival rate of 74% and 3-year survival rate of 70%. Conclusions The results of this study show that a multidisciplinary-approach to patient care funded by a comprehenesive benefits program can positively impact patients' overall survival in colorectal cancer. This study serves to promote the support for this program by PhilHealth in the future. Legal entity responsible for the study University of the Philippines - Philippine General Hospital. Funding Has not received any funding. Disclosure All authors have declared no conflicts of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A new diagnosis method for high energy ions utilizing a single CR-39 detector mounted on plastic plates is demonstrated to identify the presence of the high energy component beyond the CR-39's detection threshold limit. On irradiation of the CR-39 detector unit with a 25 MeV per nucleon He ion beam from conventional rf-accelerators, a large number of etch pits having elliptical openings are observed on the rear surface of the CR-39. Detailed investigations reveal that these etch pits are created by heavy ions inelastically backscattered from the plastic plates. This ion detection method is applied to laser-driven ion acceleration experiments using cluster-gas targets, and ion signals with energies up to 50 MeV per nucleon are identified. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]