Awareness of thyroid cancer among medical students: A questionnaire-based study.

To investigate whether medical students acquire enough knowledge about thyroid cancer (TC). It was a cross-sectional study in a Chinese medical college based on a questionnaire about the knowledge of TC and thyroid self-examination. Medical students enrolled were grouped into preclinical medical students (PMS) and clinical medical students (CMS) according to their grades. A total of 337 questionnaires were distributed and 274 effective responses were collected with 129 from PMS and 145 from CMS. The percentage of thyroid self-examination in CMS was higher than that of PMS (55.8% vs 11.6%, p < 0.001). Generally, CMS had better comprehension of TC, including prognosis (97.2% vs 64.5%, p < 0.001), diagnosis (95.6% vs 33.1%, p < 0.001), and surgery indications (82.1% vs 58.1%, p = 0.001). There was no significant difference between PMS and CMS on the acquaintance of the risk factors. However, more CMS stated that the below 5% of thyroid nodules might turn malignant (45.5% vs 6.5%, p < 0.001), and more CMS suggested that people without nodules should receive TC screening tests (62.1% vs 41.9%, p = 0.001). Medical education on TC was effective in teaching clinical knowledge. Medical school should focus more on preclinical general health education and clinical practices education in the future.

Multi-Modality Treatment for Patients With Metastatic Gastric Cancer: A Real-World Study in China.

Introduction: People with metastatic gastric cancer (GC) have a poor prognosis. The study aims to investigate the efficacy of multi-modality treatment for patients with metastatic GC. Methods: We retrospectively identified 267 patients with stage IV gastric cancer who were treated with systemic chemotherapy: 114 received multi-modality treatments, 153 received systematic chemotherapy alone. The survival of these two groups was compared by log rank test, the independent prognostic factors were investigated using univariate and multivariate analyses. Results: The median survival of metastatic GC patients who received multi-modality treatment was significantly longer than those who received systematic chemotherapy alone (18.4 vs. 11.4 months, P < 0.001). Multivariate analysis identified tumor histologic differentiation, CA19-9 level, previous curative resection, palliative gastrectomy, and metastasectomy as independent prognostic factors for overall survival. In the multimodality treatment group, patients who received palliative gastrectomy or metastasectomy had a longer survival than those who only received intraperitoneal chemotherapy or radiotherapy (21.6 vs. 15.2 months, P = 0.014). Conclusion: Multi-modality treatments offer a survival benefit for patients with metastatic GC. Future prospective studies are needed to confirm the result.