The associations of comorbidities and consumption of fruit and vegetable with quality of life among stomach cancer survivors.

BACKGROUND: Stomach cancer survivors (SCS) often carry the dual burden of the cancer itself and other comorbidities; meanwhile, they are highly motivated to seek health advice about lifestyles to improve their health and quality of life (QOL). The associations of the comorbidity and the consumption of vegetable and fruit with QOL remain even less clear among the SCS. This study aimed to investigate the associations of comorbidities and consumption of fruit and vegetable with QOL among SCS. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 969 SCS between April and July 2015 in Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Data were collected using a self-reported questionnaire, which included questions on sociodemographic characteristics, comorbidities and fruit and vegetable consumption, and a simplified Chinese version of the European Organization for Research and Treatment quality of life version 3 (EORTC QLQ-C30) questionnaire. In order to mitigate the bias caused by confounding factors, multiple linear regression models were employed to calculate the adjusted means of QOL scores. RESULTS: The proportion of participants without any comorbidity was only 23.3%, and the most common comorbidity among SCS was digestive diseases (49.8%). Participants with comorbidity generally reported lower scores for global health and functioning subscales and higher scores for symptom in EORTC QLQ-C30 compared to participants without comorbidity, indicating poorer QOL. Higher scores in most functioning subscales and lower scores in some symptoms subscales were found in participants (38.7%) who ate more than 250 g vegetables every day, compared to participants with less vegetable consumption, and in participants (58.1%) who ate fruit every day, compared to participants who didn't eat fruit every day indicating better QOL. CONCLUSIONS: The comorbidities are common health problems among SCS and have significantly negative influence on QOL, and participants with comorbidities generally reported lower QOL scores. The enough vegetables and fruit consumption are positively associated with QOL of SCS. These findings suggested that a multidisciplinary team approach and a variety of delivery systems are needed to address the medical, psychosocial, and lifestyle components for enriching patient-centered care among SCS.

Development and Validation of a Nomogram for Predicting Survival in Patients with Advanced Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma.

This study aimed to develop and validate an effective prognostic nomogram for advanced PDAC patients. We conducted a prospective multicenter cohort study involving 1,526 advanced PDAC patients from three participating hospitals in China between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2013. Two thirds of the patients were randomly assigned to the training set (n = 1,017), and one third were assigned to the validation set (n = 509). Multivariate cox regression analysis was performed to identify significant prognostic factors for overall survival to develop the nomogram. Internal and external validation using C-index and calibration curve were conducted in the training set and validation set respectively. As results, seven independent prognostic factors were identified: age, tumor stage, tumor size, ALT (alanine aminotransferase), ALB (albumin), CA 19-9, HBV infection status, and these factors were entered into the nomogram. The proposed nomogram showed favorable discrimination and calibration both in the training set and validation set. The C-indexes of the training set and validation set were 0.720 and 0.696 respectively, which were both significantly higher than that of the staging system (C-index = 0.613, P < 0.001). In conclusion, the proposed nomogram may be served as an effective tool for prognostic evaluation of advanced PDAC.

The efficacy and safety of immunotherapy in patients with advanced NSCLC: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Immunotherapy is a novel treatment for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. Immunotherapy includes two main broad classes of therapeutic vaccines and immune checkpoint inhibitors, as well as cytokines, biological response modifiers and cellular therapy. The present systematic review and meta-analysis aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of different classes of immunotherapy in patients with advanced NSCLC. Literature search was done on Medline, Embase and Cochrane Library. The primary endpoints were overall survival (OS) and grade ≥3 adverse events. Twenty randomized controlled trials were finally identified in our study. Efficacy analysis indicated an improvement of OS in advanced NSCLC patients after treating by therapeutic vaccines and immune checkpoint inhibitors, but not for other immunomodulators. Safety analysis showed that immunotherapy was well-tolerated. All kinds of grade ≥3 adverse events were similar between experimental group and control group except that neutropenia and thrombocytopenia had a higher incidence in patients received vaccines. In conclusion, immunotherapy is a promising treatment for advanced NSCLC patients. Our findings will be further confirmed and supplemented by several phase II and phase III RCTs which are going to complete in near future.

Speckle reduction by combination of digital filter and optical suppression in a modified Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm computer-generated hologram.

A speckleless illuminated modified-Gerchberg-Saxton-algorithm-type computer-generated hologram, which adopts a lower frequency of the iterative algorithm and calculation time, is proposed to code a hologram with two signals and position a multiplexing phase-only function, which can reconstruct the left and the right viewing holograms on the pupillary-distance position after the decryption and still maintain the content with high contrast and definition. The reconstructed image quality presents root mean square error of 0.03, with a diffraction efficiency of 87%, and signal-to-noise ratio of 8 dB after the analysis. Furthermore, two denoising techniques for the digital filter and optical suppression are combined, in which the speckle suppression with pseudorandom phase modulation and a rotating diffuser are utilized for successfully reducing the speckle contrast, which was reduced to below 4%. The goal was to reduce visual fatigue for the viewers.

Pulfrich autostereo display with micro-prism array.

A micro-prism film, with spectral characteristics, is attached on a display panel to show images appearing with + 10° ~ + 50° and -10° ~-50° bright regions and with a + 10° ~-10° dark region. When both eyes separately receive the bright region and the dark region of an image, interocular delay would appear to generate a stereo perception. With the optical simulation software, LightTools 7.3.0, to simulate the brightness change, the light with lower brightness appears on the 0° region and the light with the highest brightness appears on the ± 10° region. The optimal viewing distance of 25 cm could accurately deliver the image with shading parallax to both eyes. The actual measurement of brightness presents the shading distribution, achieving the condition of binocular retinal illumination, and the angle of visibility appears on the ± 50° region, causing interocular delay so that the viewer generates the stereo perception.

Panoramic stereo photography based on single-lens with a double-symmetric prism.

Different from traditional panorama stereo acquisition technique shooting with numerous cameras, this study equips a double-symmetric prism in front of a single-lens camera to acquire images from four different angles of view, and the images acquired from the cameras every 20 degrees complete a pair of panorama stereo images with vertical angle of view ( ± 16 degrees) by image-based rendering. The panorama stereo acquisition technique reduces the number of cameras by three-fourth, and the acquired images contain vertical angles of view. Moreover, the image resolution is enhanced several times of the resolution of integral photography without moiré effect.

A hybrid temporal and spatial speckle-suppression method for laser displays.

We propose a system that reduces laser display speckles by vibrating the light pipe. A small displacement of the light pipe appears to allow the total reflection of the laser, thereby resulting in a homogenized speckle field that changes with time. In this case, the speckle interference generated by the pattern projected by the laser through the light pipe destroys the spatial homogenization of the laser beams when the light pipe is vibrated. Moreover, when the light pipe begins the sequential vibration, the phases and paths of the beams are changed after the beams traverse the light pipe. Consequently, temporal speckle wavefront superposition can homogenize the luminous intensity distribution of the speckle pattern. This process reduces the speckle contrast to less than 4% while maintaining a luminous intensity of greater than 70%.

Binary blazed grating based on autostereoscopic display mechanism.

The diffractive optical element blazed grating is proposed as the beam splitter for autostereoscopic displays in this study. With Lithographie Galvanoformung Abformung and inductively coupled plasma reactive-ion etching, a four-level blazed grating structure is produced. Moreover, highly translucent polydimethylsiloxane is transformed into symmetrical four-level blazed grating films. The experimental results show that the film can successfully transmit the left and the right images to the accurate positions, and the diffraction efficiency is 70.4% and the contrast ratio is above 80%, presenting the original stereoscopic image without it being affected by brightness and crosstalk. In the experiment of stereoscopic imaging, both the left and the right images could be clearly acquired, which proves the feasibility of blazed gratings as practical for the beam splitter of autostereoscopic displays.

Design of a symmetric blazed grating sheet embedded in an autostereoscopic display.

This study proposes a diffractive autostereoscopic display technology that utilizes blazed grating embedded in the liquid crystal panel to deliver a stereo image pair to both eyes. Having the diffractive red green blue beams as the color source of the panel, color filters are no longer required in this system. From the simulation analyses, not only could the brightness achieve 77.90%, but no serious chromatic aberration or cross talk appeared.