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Biomedical subjects

O Solheim

Publications and source records attributed to O Solheim.

14 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Quality of life after treatment for incidental, unruptured intracranial aneurysms.

BACKGROUND: Discovering an intracranial aneurysm may profoundly affect the patient's quality of life. Patients living with unruptured and untreated aneurysms often report symptoms of anxiety and depression. There are few trials studying the quality of life after treatment of unruptured intracranial aneurysms. We aimed to compare the quality of life and symptoms of anxiety or depression after endovascular coiling or open surgery clipping of unruptured intracranial aneurysms, in patients with no prior subarachnoid haemorrhage. METHOD: 73 living patients were included. 44 had undergone open surgery clipping and 31 had undergone endovascular coiling within the last 5.5 years. We registered a number of parameters from medical records and the patients' current quality of life was assessed by a questionnaire. 63 of 73 (86.3%) returned our questionnaire, which included the Norwegian version of SF-36 and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HAD). FINDINGS: Many patients treated for unruptured intracranial aneurysms have a relatively low quality of life. The low scores indicate that the patients experience limitations in their ability to work or accomplish desired activities due to perceived physical or mental handicaps. There were no significant differences between the open surgery group and the endovascular group when comparing quality of life parameters after treatment. A subgroup analysis of patients with a favourable functional outcome also showed reduced quality of life without any differences in the two treatment groups. There were no signs of improvement in quality of life over time. CONCLUSION: Quality of life after treatment does not seem to be a strong argument for choosing one modality of treatment over the other in patients with unruptured intracranial aneurysms. There are no significant differences in the quality of life of patients successfully treated using endovascular technique and patients who underwent craniotomy and clipping. We speculate that the low quality of life scores are due to factors unrelated to the aneurysms. The scores possibly reflect characteristics of a patient group where incidental aneurysms are more frequently diagnosed while undergoing extensive imaging procedures due to unrelated symptoms.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1991

Osteogenic sarcoma: MR signal abnormalities of the brain in asymptomatic patients treated with high-dose methotrexate.

The advent of lesions with high signal intensity in periventricular white matter was incidentally observed on T2-weighted images in one patient who underwent magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of the brain after administration of high-dose methotrexate (HDMTX) for osteogenic sarcoma. Twenty-one additional symptom-free patients who had been treated with the same regimen and 10 patients who had undergone cisplatin-based chemotherapy for testicular cancer also underwent examination. Fourteen of the patients with osteosarcoma showed high-signal-intensity lesions in white matter on T2-weighted images. The interval between the last course of chemotherapy and MR imaging was a factor in this finding, as 12 of 14 patients who underwent examination within 2 years after chemotherapy had a positive finding, as opposed to two of eight patients who underwent examination later. The patients with testicular cancer had normal MR images. The occurrence of MR imaging abnormalities in asymptomatic patients treated with HDMTX for osteogenic sarcoma may be subclinical evidence of treatment-related central nervous system toxicity.

Brain↗
PubMed1989

Adjuvant chemotherapy with doxorubicin in high-grade soft tissue sarcoma: a randomized trial of the Scandinavian Sarcoma Group.

From January 1981 to February 1986, a total of 240 patients with primary, malignancy-grade III or IV soft tissue sarcoma were entered into an adjuvant chemotherapy multicenter trial conducted by the Scandinavian Sarcoma Group (SSG). Of these patients, 181 were evaluable. The tumor was located in the extremities in 155 patients. After radical surgery (wide and compartmental) the patients were randomized to treatment with single-agent doxorubicin 60 mg/m2 administered as an intravenous (IV) bolus once a month for 9 months (group 1, n = 77) or to control (group 2, n = 77). If the surgical procedure was marginal, the patients initially received postoperative radiotherapy, followed by doxorubicin (group 3, n = 16) or control (group 4, n = 11). The control groups did not receive any adjuvant chemotherapy. Adjuvant therapy was initiated within 6 weeks of surgery (group 1) or within 10 weeks of surgery for patients receiving postoperative radiotherapy (group 3). With a median follow-up of 40 months, there was no significant difference between the four treatment groups in overall survival (group 1, 75%; group 2, 70%; group 3, 69%; group 4, 73%), disease-free survival (group 1, 62%; group 2, 56%; group 3, 62%; group 4, 64%), or local tumor control (group 1, 92%; group 2, 92%; group 3, 87%; group 4, 90%). The conclusions were the same whether the total group or evaluable patients only were included in the analysis. The local recurrence rate for patients undergoing radical surgery was 8% and for patients undergoing marginal surgery followed by radiotherapy was 12%. This study indicates that the use of single-agent doxorubicin as postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy has no significant clinical benefit in patients with high-grade soft tissue sarcoma.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1981

The prognosis in osteosarcoma: Norwegian National Data.

Reports on the varying effect of adjuvant chemotherapy in the treatment of osteosarcomas led the authors to analyze survival experience in osteosarcomas on a national level. Data from the Norwegian Cancer Registry, covering the total population of Norway (4 million), were analyzed. There appeared to be no significant changes in survival from 1953 to 1975. For the period 1975-1977, the 48-month survival time improved from 25% for the three preceding five-year periods to 47%. Possible changes in diagnostics and reporting seem to have had little effect on the occurrence of the disease. Improvement in short-time survival was therefore considered attributable to adjuvant chemotherapy introduced in 1975 and its accompanying procedures of early amputation, intensified clinical follow-up, and possible surgery on metastases. The partial contribution of these treatment elements could not be ascertained.

Bone Neoplasms↗