Changes in fatigue in rectal cancer patients before and after therapy: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

PURPOSE: Fatigue is a common problem among rectal cancer patients and can affect their quality of life. This study conducted a systematic review to better understand changes in fatigue severity in rectal cancer patients before, during, and after they undergo therapy. METHODS: We used preset keywords to search the Cochrane Library, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PubMed, and ProQuest databases for relevant studies published between 2000 and 2018, and data analysis was performed using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) software (version 2.2.048) and SPSS software (version 19.0). In total, nine articles with complete data were included in our meta-analysis. RESULTS: Fatigue conditions were compared before the start of therapy (baseline) and at 1 month (time 1), 3 months (time 2), 6 months (time 3), and 12 months (time 4) after the start of therapy. The standardized mean differences (SMDs) of the pooling effects size were 1.013 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.217-1.810), - 0.551 (95% CI - 0.647 to - 0.456), - 0.330 (95% CI - 0.427 to - 0.233), and - 0.149 (95% CI - 0.221 to - 0.078), respectively. Subsequent analysis with a linear mixed effect model revealed that the estimate of the time variable was - 0.226 (p = 0.047), which indicates that the severity of fatigue varies over time and over the course of treatment. The results reveal that fatigue affects rectal cancer patients even before they start therapy. CONCLUSION: Although fatigue worsened during the first month after cancer therapy, it gradually improved thereafter.

How the New Type of Entrepreneurship Education Complements the Traditional One in Developing Entrepreneurial Competencies and Intention.

While business schools aim to train students to develop specialized professional competencies, knowledge, and skills related to management and corporate functions according to their major programs, entrepreneurship education in higher education intends to develop students' entrepreneurial competencies and intention. However, the entrepreneurial and managerial domains are not mutually exclusive but overlap to a certain extent. This study utilized the National Taiwan University (NTU) as a case to explore the effects of two paths of entrepreneurial education at NTU on the development of students' entrepreneurial competencies and intention. The aim of this study was to investigate differences in business school students' entrepreneurial competencies and intention between those who took the Creativity and Entrepreneurship Program (CEP) and those who did not, and to explore the context limits or facilitations in the entrepreneurship education of college students in different academic disciplines of management school. Results of the study showed that the CEP course did have positive impacts on all entrepreneurial competencies and intention, that the effectiveness on the attitude domains was more evident than that on the knowledge or skills domains, and that academic disciplines did have a context effect on students' entrepreneurial competencies and intention. This study sheds further light on the "black box" of context limits or facilitations in entrepreneurship education. Implications of the study are that it may lead to a complementary framework of effectively integrating the entrepreneurial program with the business and management courses, which would better facilitate students' learning of entrepreneurship competencies and may increase their intention to become future entrepreneurs.