ABSTRACT
Introduction: Colorectal cancer is the third most common cause of cancer in the world, after lung and breast cancer, while in Croatia is the most common malignant disease. Among the EU members, Croatia ranks ninth in terms of the incidence of colon cancer and a high second place by mortality. Since 2007, Croatia has had a National Colon Cancer Early Detection Program, but the response rate is still very low - 36% (25-52% depending on county and year).2 Despite the prevention program, approximately 13% of patients in Croatia is initially diagnosed with metastatic disease.1 According to the results of the CONCORD 3 study3, Croatia is at the bottom of the five-year survival (48%) compared to some other western countries (up to 71%) in the world. Method(s): A retrospective analysis was conducted at the Clinic of Oncology and Radiotherapy, CHC Split. Patients with newly diagnosed colorectal adenocarcinoma enrolled in the clinic from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020 were processed. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics methods, with the use of Microsoft Excel tools. Result(s): A retrospective analysis of the medical history identified 269 patients (compared to 387 in 2017) presented at the multidisciplinary team (MDT) of CHC Split who were diagnosed with colorectal adenocarcinoma in 2020. All patients were presented to the MDT before starting the treatment. The median age of patients was 66 years, and the youngest patient was 22 years old. Patients from other counties who did not undergo the entire treatment/monitoring in our institution were excluded from the analysis. 52 patients (19.3%) were diagnosed in the metastatic stage of the disease, in stage 0 4 patients (1.5%), in stage I 32 (12%), in stage II 91 (34%), and in stage III 88 (33%). In 2 patients, the stage couldn't be precisely determined. There is a significant decrease in the number (81 in 2017 and 52 in 2020) but no percentage wise (20.9% in 2017 and 19.3% in 2020) of patients diagnosed with de novo metastatic colorectal cancer compared to the previous analysis from 2017, when 81 of them were detected. Patients diagnosed with metastatic disease were mostly in good general condition: ECOG 0 status 21 patients (40.3%), ECOG 1 24 patients (46.2%), ECOG 2 7 patients (13.5%), while no patient was ECOG status 3 or 4. 32 (57.7%) patients had a left-sided tumor, while 20 (42.3%) patients had a right-sided tumor. Conclusion(s): The results of our retrospective analysis showed a significant decrease in the number of patients compared to previous years. The effect of the smaller number of newly diagnosed patients will be analyzed and the real consequences will be seen, however, the appearance of patients in the later stages of the disease is to be expected.
ABSTRACT
Contact tracing is one of the methods used by the government and organizations for controlling viral diseases like COVID-19, which claimed many human lives. Social distancing is advised to everyone to minimize the virus from spreading. This study aims to build a contact tracing tool that monitors social distancing individually using computer vision in real-time. Object tracking by detection is used for individual monitoring with YOLOv4 (You Only Look Once) as the object detector and SORT (Simple Online and Real-time Tracking) as the object tracker. The combination gained an average streaming and detection frame rate of 26 FPS and 10 FPS on NVIDIA's GTX 1650, respectively. It is expected to have more frame rate when used in a more powerful device. Moreover, the system obtained 98.2% accuracy in measuring the distance between individuals. Furthermore, the performance of the QR scanner used in the study attains a 100% success rate and a 98% accuracy in allocating the QR code to the correct owner from the video stream. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women worldwide. It represents 24.5% of all cancers in women with estimated 684,996 deaths from breast cancer in 2020. More than 80% of breast cancer is classified as hormone receptor-positive (HR+) breast cancer. PIK3CA mutations occur in approximately 40% of patients with HR +, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative breast cancer. Endocrine therapy, with or without cyclin-dependent kinase 4 and 6 (CDK4/6) inhibitor is the standard treatment for patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer. However, acquired resistance to endocrine-based therapy still remains a challenge. Moreover, the truth is that breast cancer outcomes lie in the treatment opportunities as well as system organization. Recently, PIK3CA inhibitor alpelisib became a new standard of care for a second line therapy. Its penetration in the everyday care depends on diagnostic of the biomarker-PIK3CA mutation. Here, we describe the first experience of ours in the process of diagnostics of PIK3CA mutation on the cohort of our advanced HR+, HER2-breast cancer patients. Methods: We did a retrospective analysis of data from all patients with HR+, HER2-metastatic breast cancer who were tested on presence of PIK3CA mutation in Clinical Hospital Split until December 2020. The cobas® PIK3CA Mutation Test was used. This is a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test used to identify patients with advanced or metastatic breast cancer with PIK3CA mutation. Results: From September 2019 until December 2020, we have tested 50 patients on presence of PIK3CA mutation. In all cases PCR method was used and the sample was archival tissue. Only two of all tested patients were male and the rest were female. The average age of patients was 61.13 years. The eldest patient was 81 and the youngest 32 years old at the time they were tested. The PIK3CA mutation was established in 21/50 (42%) of patients. Determined hotspot mutations were: E545 in 3/21 (14.28%), E545X in 4/21 (19.04%), E542 in 2/21 (9.53%), E542K in 2/21 (9.53%), H1047 in 2/21 (9.53%), H1047X in 4/21 (19.04%), N345K in 2/21 (9.53%) cases. In two cases (2/21, 9.53%) hotspot mutations H1047X and N345K were presented concurrently. Conclusion: Our results coincide with data from previous world studies. In our hands PIK3CA testing proves to be easily established and run. Given the situation with COVID-19 pandemic, the number of tested patients is not overly high. Additional efforts are needed to fully state testing and to test as many patients as possible so that patients who result positive could potentially have benefits from therapies directed against PIK3CA.