Taste Disorders: Effect of Education in Patients With Breast Cancer Receiving Chemotherapy.

BACKGROUND: For patients with breast cancer treated with certain chemotherapy regimens, taste disorders associated with those regimens can negatively affect quality of life. OBJECTIVES: This study evaluated the effects of taste disorder-related education on meal satisfaction and sense of taste in Japanese women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy. METHODS: A sample of 53 newly diagnosed women with breast cancer scheduled for chemotherapy treatment were randomly assigned to the control or intervention (nurse-provided education about chemotherapy-associated taste disorders) group. Meal satisfaction and sense of taste were assessed using a visual analog scale. FINDINGS: The proportions of patients with meal dissatisfaction and impaired sense of taste were lower in the intervention group than in the control group. Although meal dissatisfaction and impaired sense of taste recovered in the intervention group two months after protocol completion, they did not recover in the control group. Providing education to women with breast cancer scheduled for chemotherapy treatment can affect patients' experience of treatment-associated taste disorders.

Immunohistochemical Heterogeneity Within Clinically Nonfunctioning Pituitary Adenomas.

To investigate whether adenohypophysial hormone expression is heterogeneous within individual clinically nonfunctioning pituitary adenomas, immunohistochemical examinations were performed on tissues obtained by multiple sampling of 11 adenomas. Stained sections were assessed by morphometric image analysis as well as semiquantitative estimation under microscopy. All tumors except one were immunopositive for one or more gonadotropins. Results were divided into five grades based on the proportion of immunoreactive cells per section. Semiquantitative estimation showed only a one-grade difference among samples from the same tumor in four cases for FSHB and in two cases for LHB. These qualitative similarities between multiple samples were confirmed by morphometric image analysis. From the practical standpoint of making a diagnosis of nonfunctioning pituitary adenoma, it is not necessary to take into account immunohistochemical heterogeneity within an individual tumor, and immunohistochemical findings in a given sample obtained at surgery can be regarded as representative of the entire adenoma.