Publications by authors named "Alice Bernasconi"

Relative survival with the general population as the reference (RS) is commonly used to estimate net survival (NS). However, cancer patients may face an increased risk of non-cancer death compared to cancer-free individuals. We evaluate the impact of considering this relative risk (RR) on NS estimation.

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Background: Adolescents and young adults (AYA) cancer survivors experience increased morbidity and mortality from second cancers, cardiovascular, infectious, kidney, and other chronic diseases. We aim to calculate all-causes cancer and non-cancer excess mortality of young cancer survivors compared to the general population.

Methods: The AYA cohort includes cancer patients diagnosed between 1976 and 2013 and alive at 5 years after diagnosis in 30 population-based Cancer Registries and followed up until 31 December 2019.

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Objectives: Establishing causal dependencies is crucial in applied domains, such as medicine and healthcare, where decision-making must be explainable. In these settings, small sample sizes and missing data call for federated approaches to maximise the amount of information we can use.

Methods: We propose a novel federated causal discovery algorithm capable of pooling information from multiple sources with heterogeneous missing data to learn a graph representing cause-effect relationships.

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Background: Breast cancer (BC) is the most common malignancy in AYA (15-39 years) females and is more aggressive than in adult women (40-69 years). However, an updated overview on BC in AYAs and how it differs from BC in adult women is lacking.

Methods: We used data from the EUROCARE-6 study to calculate incidence rates (IRs) of BC in AYA and adult women over the period 2001-2013 in Europe.

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Background: Adolescents and young adults (AYAs), aged 15-39, face unique challenges as cancer survivors, including long-term health issues treatment. This study applies a novel approach to estimate the relative risk (RR) of mortality from non-cancer causes in AYA cancer patients compared to the general population and the cure fraction (CF) for AYA patients.

Methods: Conventional and new mixture cure models with various parametric survival functions were applied to the most common AYA cancers.

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Introduction: Globally, cancer cases are expected to significantly increase due to population growth and aging, reaching 29.9 million by 2040 (+49.5% since 2022) and 32.

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Background: The increasing incidence, rapidly evolving classification, rarity and heterogeneity of neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs) pose challenges to NEN registration including difficulty in distinguishing neuroendocrine carcinoma (NEC) and neuroendocrine tumours (NETs). Thus, in Italy a higher NEC incidence was reported. Focusing on gastroenteropancreatic (GEP) NEN, we aimed to review GEP NEN, and in particular cases of neuroendocrine carcinoma, not otherwise specified (NOS) and estimate the incidence of NEN, NET and NEC of the GEP.

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Background: Rare cancers correspond to approximately 200 clinical entities, which can be grouped into 12 families. Updated data are available for childhood and haematological cancers, ie, for only two of the 12 families of rare cancer. We provide incidence and survival for the remaining ten families of rare adult solid cancers (RAC), across 29 EU Member States and over time.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study addresses the growing concern of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) among adolescent and young adult (AYA) survivors of breast cancer due to the cardiotoxic effects of cancer treatments.
  • Researchers developed a Bayesian network model using data from over a thousand young female BC survivors to predict CVD risk, achieving strong classification performance and clear causal relationships.
  • An application was created to provide individual risk assessments for patients, aimed at helping clinicians personalize follow-up care for AYA BC survivors at higher risk of developing CVDs.
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Article Synopsis
  • Young patients might find it hard to use chatbots that provide health information about rare cancers like rhabdomyosarcoma.
  • Five doctors checked how well these chatbots could give information and found they did well in general facts but poorly in treatment suggestions and finding specialist centers.
  • The smart health community is planning to make these chatbots better by improving the information they learn from.
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Article Synopsis
  • A new modeling approach was developed to better estimate the cancer cure fraction (CF) and net survival by considering patients' increased risk of dying from causes other than cancer, rather than assuming equal mortality rates with the general population.
  • Data from EUROCARE-6 on head and neck, colorectal, and breast cancer patients aged 40-79 was analyzed, revealing a significant increase in CF, particularly among younger males with head and neck cancer who had a fourfold increased risk of dying from other causes.
  • Ignoring the higher mortality risk from non-cancer causes leads to an underestimation of the CF, which is crucial for understanding patient survival and improving their quality of life.
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Background: Management of lymphoid malignancies requires substantial health system resources. Total national health expenditure might influence population-based lymphoid malignancy survival. We studied the long-term survival of patients with 12 lymphoid malignancy types and examined whether different levels of national health expenditure might explain differences in lymphoid malignancy prognosis between European countries and regions.

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Background: We used the comprehensive definition of AYA (age 15 to 39 years) to update 5-year relative survival (RS) estimates for AYAs in Europe and across countries and to evaluate improvements in survival over time.

Methods: We used data from EUROCARE-6. We analysed 700,000 AYAs with cancer diagnosed in 2000-2013 (follow-up to 2014).

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Background: To estimate risk of recurrence for women diagnosed with nonmetastatic breast cancer considering the risks of other causes mortality.

Methods: We extend a method based on the diagnosis-metastasis-death pathway to include risks of other causes mortality. We estimate three probabilities as cumulative incidence of: (i) being alive and recurrence-free, (ii) death for other causes before a recurrence, and (iii) recurrence.

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We studied the COVID-19 impact in newly-diagnosed breast cancer (7,349 patients in 2019, and 5,563 in 2020). In 2020 there were two diagnostic drops: -37.2% (March-May), -15.

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Background: A strong relationship has been observed between comorbidities and the risk of severe/fatal COVID-19 manifestations, but no score is available to evaluate their association in cancer patients. To make up for this lacuna, we aimed to develop a comorbidity score for cancer patients, based on the Lombardy Region healthcare databases.

Methods: We used hospital discharge records to identify patients with a new diagnosis of solid cancer between February and December 2019; 61 comorbidities were retrieved within 2 years before cancer diagnosis.

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Background: Distal radius fractures (DRFs) are a common challenge in orthopaedic trauma care, yet for those fractures that are treated nonoperatively, strong evidence to guide cast treatment is still lacking.

Aim: To compare the efficacy of below elbow cast (BEC) and above elbow cast (AEC) in maintaining reduction of manipulated DRFs.

Methods: We conducted a prospective, monocentric, randomized, parallel-group, open label, blinded, noninferiority trial comparing the efficacy of BEC and AEC in the nonoperative treatment of DRFs.

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Background: Data on late mortality from pediatric germ cell tumors (GCTs) are limited to small case series. Our population-based study aimed to investigate excess risk of death in survivors of GCT in childhood and adolescence, whether long-term mortality changed over time and by period of diagnosis.

Methods: The PanCare Childhood and Adolescent Cancer Survivor Care and Follow-Up Studies (PanCareSurFup) cohort includes 2773 five-year survivors diagnosed under 21 years of age with gonadal and extragonadal GCT (from 1940 to 2008).

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Our aim was to analyse, on a population level, the year-long decline in cancer diagnoses in the region of Lombardy (Italy), and to characterise the tumours with the greatest reduction in diagnosis by patient age, sex and tumour stage at diagnosis. We used the health care utilisation databases of the Lombardy region to identify cancer patients' characteristics (eg, sex, age) and cancer-related information (eg, cancer site, stage at diagnosis). The frequency of new cancer diagnoses in 2019 and 2020 were compared in terms of percentage differences in undiagnosed cases.

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Background: Increased success in the treatment of hematological cancers contributed to the increase of 5-year survival for most adolescent and young adults (AYAs) with these tumours. However, as 5-year survival increased, it became clear that AYA long-term survivors were at increased risk for severe late effects. Moreover, limited information on long-term cancer impact is available for AYAs, since most studies focused on children and adolescents.

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Aim: Recommendations for managing patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) in non-endemic areas are largely derived from studies conducted in endemic areas. We analysed the impact of treatment approaches on survival in non-endemic areas.

Methods: In an international, multicentre, retrospective study, we analyse consecutive patients with NPC diagnosed between 2004 and 2017 in 36 hospitals from 11 countries.

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Background: Evidence about late effects in adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer survivors is scarce. This study assessed the risk of subsequent malignant neoplasms (SMNs) to identify the most common SMNs to be considered in follow-up care.

Methods: Population-based cancer registries retrospectively identified first primary tumors (between 1976 and 2013) and SMNs in AYAs (15-39 years old at their cancer diagnosis).

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Cancer patients are identified as fragile patients who are often immunodepressed and subject to secondary diseases. The Ada cohort comprises cancer survivors aged 15-39 years at diagnosis included in 34 Italian cancer registries. This study aimed to analyze the possible excess of non-cancer medicines use on the basis of the medicine database of the Ada cohort.

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The stambomycins are a family of bioactive macrolides isolated from . Aside from two stereocenters installed through cytochrome P450 oxidations, their stereochemistry has been predicted by sequence analysis of the polyketide synthase. We report a synthesis of the C1-C27 fragment of stambomycin D, the spectroscopic data of which correlates well with that of the natural product, further validating predictive sequence analysis as a powerful tool for stereochemical assignment of complex polyketide natural products.

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