Management of iris melanomas with 125Iodine plaque radiotherapy.

PURPOSE: To report the experience of the Princess Margaret Hospital/University Health Network with the treatment of iris melanoma (IM) with (125)Iodine plaque brachytherapy. DESIGN: Retrospective noncomparative case series. METHODS: All cases of IM submitted to (125)Iodine plaque radiotherapy were included. Patients' demographic, clinical, management, and follow-up data were reviewed. Outcome measures included rates of tumor control, eye preservation, systemic metastases, and brachytherapy-related complications. RESULTS: Fourteen IMs were included in the study. All patients had blue/green irises. Mean largest basal dimension and thickness were 7.1 +/- 2.1 mm (range, 4.0 to 11.5 mm) and 2.2 +/- 0.8 mm (range, 1.0 to 3.5 mm), respectively. Ten patients (71%) had seeding and 2 (14%) had glaucoma at presentation. Median follow-up was 26.6 +/- 19.5 months (range, 6 to 72 months). Tumor control was achieved in 100% of the cases and no eye was enucleated because of radiation-induced complications. At last visit, all patients were alive and free of metastasis. Final visual acuity was the same as or better than before treatment in 9 patients (75%). Cataract was the most common complication (8; 75%), followed by persistent glaucoma (2; 17%) and anterior uveitis (1; 8%). No other significant complication was seen during the follow-up period. CONCLUSIONS: Plaque radiotherapy is a safe and effective conservative treatment option for IM, although cataract is a common, yet treatable, complication. This treatment scheme circumvents an intraocular procedure and may avoid the dissemination of malignant cells, and provides a margin of safety in the treatment of clinically undetectable disease.

Chest wall pain and rib fracture after stereotactic radiotherapy for peripheral non-small cell lung cancer.

Stereotactic body radiotherapy is an emerging treatment option for peripheral non-small cell lung cancer in medically inoperable patients. With high dose per fraction radiotherapy, late side effects are of possible concern. In our initial cohort of 42 patients treated with 54 to 60 Gy in three fractions, nine patients have rib fracture. The median dose to rib fracture sites was 46 to 50 Gy, depending on the method of dose calculation. We describe a typical case of poststereotactic radiotherapy rib fracture and present dosimetric analysis of patients with rib fracture.

Mismaking memories: neural precursors of memory illusions in electrical brain activity.

Memory illusions--vivid experiences of events that never occurred--could result from inaccuracies either in retrieving memories or in initially storing them. In two experiments, people studied lists of associated words that either did or did not induce later illusory (false) memories of associated but nonpresented lure words. The amplitude of the electrical brain activity during study of words (approximately 500-1,300 ms) that were themselves later correctly remembered reliably distinguished list words that led to such illusory memories from those that did not. This encoding difference associated with subsequent illusory memory (referred to as a DIM)--presumably reflecting item-specific encoding differences--is a neural precursor of memory illusions.

Effective warnings in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false-memory paradigm: the role of identifiability.

These experiments document that warnings can substantially reduce false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm when the critical items are easily identifiable. Participants in a norming study identified the critical item after hearing a list of words. The lists with critical items that could be identified by the largest proportion of participants (high identifiable [HI] lists) and the smallest proportion of participants (low identifiable [LI] lists) were used in the experiment. Participants heard lists of words (e.g., bed, rest, doze) related to a critical item (e.g., sleep) and were warned about the nature of the lists before the study phase. The results indicated that warnings reduced false recognition of critical items for HI lists but not LI lists.