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J Barrett

Publications and source records attributed to J Barrett.

424 records · Page 24Linked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

Impact of an educational program on physician cancer control knowledge and activities.

Continuing medical education (CME) programs are a common way for physicians to keep up with new developments in medical care. CME has been criticized as poorly evaluated at best and ineffective at worst. Proposed modifications in the traditional CME format include a role for influential peers, physician discussion groups, and self-formulated contracts. As part of a project that is testing methods to improve primary care physician cancer control performance, we provided an eight-hour educational program that included these proposed modifications and that addressed early detection of breast, cervical, and colon cancer and counseling on nutrition and smoking cessation. Physician knowledge improved after the program in four of the five content areas. In addition, physicians reported significant increases in their cancer control activities after six months. We conclude that cancer control CME programs that use interactive discussion groups, influential peers, and self-formulated contracts are feasible, well received by physicians, and result in improvements in knowledge and self-reported cancer control behavior.

Education, Medical, Continuing↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Subclavian and innominate artery trauma: a recent experience with nine patients.

This report summarizes a recent 24-month experience with 9 patients who were treated for injuries to the innominate or subclavian arteries at a large urban hospital. All patients were male, age range was 17 to 47 years, and mean age was 29 years. The mechanism of injury included major arterial avulsions sustained during cancer operations at the base of the neck (2), blunt injuries secondary to motor vehicle accidents (2), stab wounds (1), and gunshot wounds (4). The vessels injured included the right subclavian artery (2), the innominate artery (1), and the left subclavian artery (6). Associated major venous injuries were seen in 4 cases (44%) and major non-vascular injuries in 5 cases (55%). Arterial exposure involved a variety of incisions, including left thoracotomy, median sternotomy, clavicular resection, or a combination of these. Arterial continuity was restored in all cases using primary repair (2), autogenous saphenous vein graft (6), or prosthetic graft (1). Venous injuries were treated by ligation (2) or lateral venorraphy (2). One patient died unexpectedly on the tenth postoperative day for an overall mortality of 11 percent. Three of the 8 survivors sustained nonfatal complications (38%). All 8 survivors had patent arterial repairs at the time of hospital discharge, and 5 of 8 survivors were available for follow-up with intravenous digital subtraction angiography (DSA), revealing arterial repair patency in all.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Lead induced alterations in maternal behavior and offspring development in the rat.

The study was designed to determine whether lead ingestion by nursing rats would affect dam-pup interaction. Dams were exposed to diets with 0.0, 0.2, 0.4 or 1.0 percent by weight metallic lead. Mean blood-lead levels of pups at weaning were 3, 19, 40 and 57 micrograms/100 ml of blood respectively. Maternal behavior was assessed by videotaping behavior for complete 24 hour periods on alternate days from birth to weaning. Analysis of data revealed that lead affected dams nursed for longer periods than normal and offspring were slower to explore their environment. It was concluded that altered maternal behavior was related to delays in pup development and the functional isolation of experimental pups from their environment may be the antecedent to altered behavior later in maturity.

Animals↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The acetic acid component of lead acetate: its effect on rat weight and activity.

Suckling rats were exposed to one of three solutions, 2.6 x 10(-3) M lead acetate, 5 x 10(-3) M acetic acid or water, from parturition until the pups were 18 days old. Male offspring from dams on acetic acid demonstrated above normal preweaning body weights and were significantly less active than normals in the open field by day 44. The preweaning body weights and ambulation of offspring from dams on lead acetate fell between the results for normal and acetic acid rats. These results indicate that the role of the acetic acid component cannot be discounted when lead acetate is the compound utilized in behavioral studies aimed at examining an effect by lead on laboratory rats.

Acetates↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Transfection of interleukin-12 cDNAs into tumor cells induces cytotoxic immune responses against native tumor: implications for tumor vaccination.

Interleukin-12 (IL-12) is a heterodimeric cytokine that is central to the development of T helper 1-dependent cellular immunity. Although this cytokine has potential therapeutic application as an antineoplastic agent, the systemic infusion of IL-12 has led to toxic fatalities; hence, restriction of expression of IL-12 to the microenvironment of target tumor cells has obvious appeal. In this study, we examined whether tumor cells that were liposome-transfected with IL-12 could enhance the induction of cytolytic lymphocyte immunity to the native tumor. The plasmid expression vector that we used has several useful features including replication to high copy number as an episome and a polycistronic message enabling the production of both the p35 and p40 subunits of IL-12 without alternative splicing; up to 3 ng/mL/10(6)/48 hours of IL-12 was produced following transfection. Tumor cells transfected with IL-12 were superior to untransfected cells in the induction of lymphocyte-mediated cytolysis. IL-12 transfectants induced a heterogeneous population of natural killer, lymphokine activated killer, and cytolytic T lymphocytes, the latter of which exhibited tumor-specific activity. Our studies suggest that liposome-mediated transfection of tumor cells with an episomal, high copy number plasmid vector expressing both IL-12 subunits is a promising approach to cancer vaccination, a strategy that could be implemented ex vivo in treating malignancies such as metastatic ovarian cancer.

Cancer Vaccines↗