Search

Background The objective of the current study was to characterize and identify factors associated with perceptions of risk of infertility among adult male survivors of childhood cancer. Methods A total of 1233 adult male survivors from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study who were without a history of disease recurrence or subsequent malignancy reported their perceptions of their risk of infertility compared with men never diagnosed with cancer. Survivors were a median age of 37.8 years (range, 22.0-58.7 years) and were 28.4 years from their diagnosis (range, 21.4-39.2 years). Multivariable logistic regression evaluated factors associated with perceptions of risk. Results Overall, 35.9% of the survivors (443 of 1233 survivors) reported perceptions of their risk of infertility that were discordant with their actual risk based on previous cancer treatment exposures. Discordant perceptions were equally common among men exposed to gonadotoxic therapies (36.3%; 311 of 857 men) and those with no history of gonadotoxic exposure (35.1%; 132 of 376 men). Survivors who fathered children (odds ratio [OR], 4.14; 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 2.74-6.24), had no survivor-focused health care (OR, 3.07; 95% CI, 1.57-5.99), were nonwhite (OR, 2.28; 95% CI, 1.10-4.75), and were of lower income were more likely to report no increased risk of infertility after gonadotoxic treatment. Perceptions of increased risk of infertility among men with no history of gonadotoxic treatment were predicted by never having fathered a child (OR, 1.88; 95% CI, 1.17-3.03), recent participation in survivor-focused health care (OR, 2.11; 95% CI, 1.01-4.42), and higher educational achievement. Conclusions Many male survivors of childhood cancer are unaware of how their cancer treatments could impact their reproductive health, underscoring the need for all patients to receive education regarding their risk of infertility throughout the continuum of cancer care. Cancer 2018;124:2447-55. © 2018 American Cancer Society.

Background—Malnutrition is common at diagnosis and during treatment for sarcoma patients. Poor nutritional status is associated with increased risk of complications, particularly infections. We investigated the role of body mass index (BMI) on the incidence of surgical wound complications in patients with localized osteosarcoma treated on the Children's Oncology Group (COG) legacy trial, INT-0133. Procedure—Patients considered in this report had localized osteosarcoma, enrolled on COG trial INT-0133, remained on protocol therapy to have definitive surgery 6–16 weeks after study entry, and had adequate height, weight, and surgical complication data for analysis. By protocol design, definitive surgical resection was planned for 10 weeks after induction chemotherapy. Wound complications within 30 days after definitive surgery were considered post-operative. BMI was calculated at the start of neoadjuvant chemotherapy and expressed as age-and gender-adjusted percentile. The incidence of wound complications was evaluated by logistic regression or Fisher's exact test. Results—A total of 498 patients met criteria for analysis. Low BMI (≤10 th percentile) was seen in 73 (14.7%), middle BMI (11 th –94 th percentile) in 382 (76.7%), and high BMI (≥95 th percentile) in 43 (8.6%) patients. Wound infection or slough was seen in low BMI patients (OR=2.0, p=0.07) although the results did not reach statistical significance. Arterial thrombosis was more common in high BMI patients (OR=9.4, p=0.03). Conclusions—Abnormal BMI at the start of treatment for localized osteosarcoma is associated with increased risk of post-operative wound complications such as arterial thrombosis. Future studies should evaluate whether maintenance of age-appropriate BMI reduces the risk of surgical complications.

Objectives The objective of this study was to determine whether the incidence of emergence agitation (EA) can be reduced by adding an additional, faster onset, non-IV analgesic, intranasal fentanyl or intramuscular (im) ketorolac to rectal acetaminophen.

Summary Background: Graft versus host disease (GVHD) of the gut is thought to delay gastric emptying and so may increase the risk of aspirating retained contents while under anesthesia. Knowing that gastric emptying is delayed in patients with GVHD might lead one to choose to intubate the trachea for all patients with suspected GVHD, who present for diagnostic esophagogastricduodenoscopy (EGD). We are not aware of published data that gives specific guidance as to the need for intubation in the pediatric bone marrow or stem cell transplantation (BMT) population. This review was intended to evaluate the gastric contents (pH and volume) in this group of patients, to provide anesthesiologists with data that would inform their decisions about airway management for these patients. Methods: Retrospective chart review of patients ≤19 years of age undergoing EGD between 2004 and 2006. Gastric content volume and pH were measured in addition to underlying disease state and treatment. We compared BMT patients with suspected GVHD to nontransplant patients with other underlying gastrointestinal conditions. Results: Data were obtained for 77 patients post-BMT undergoing EGD, including 40 patients whose biopsies and endoscopic findings were positive for GVHD, and 37 patients with no demonstrable GVHD. Records of 144 non-BMT patients undergoing EGD within the same study period were also reviewed. Conclusion: Patients in the BMT group overall did not have higher volumes when compared to non-BMT patients. A secondary comparison of BMT patients who were found to have GVHD vs BMT patients without GVHD suggests that gastric content volume may be elevated with GVHD. Patients in the BMT group had statistically significantly higher gastric pH than patients in the non-BMT group. It is possible that the higher gastric volume in the GVHD-positive group could put them at slightly higher risk for aspiration, but the severity of any pneumonitis, should aspiration occur, might be mitigated, by the tendency toward a higher gastric pH in the BMT patients.

Studies examining the association between an outcome variable and multiple predictors are common in medical research. Examples include epidemiologic studies of risk factors for disease and clinical studies of prognostic indicators for diseased subjects. This paper is concerned with the assessment of the associations between the outcome and each predictor separately, the so-called univariate associations. Comparisons between predictors in regards to the strengths of their association with the outcome are considered. We show that though such comparisons cannot be made with standard techniques, they can be made using an algorithm which performs all of the univariate analyses simultaneously. This is accomplished with a non-standard application of generalized estimating equation methods. Comparisons of univariate associations are shown to be the key analyses of interest in a retrospective longitudinal study of childhood predictors of adult obesity. We illustrate the methodology on data from this study.