Quality of nutritional information on the Internet in health and disease.

BACKGROUND: Quality assessment of nutritional information on the internet may prove vital prior to providing public guidance on searching relative information. METHODS: The most popular web sites on four different topics ("Mediterranean diet", "sports nutrition", "nutrition, dysphagia and children" and "herbs and common cold") were assessed with the use of two validated questionnaires (EQIP and DISCERN). RESULTS: Medical categories produced significantly lower total quality scores when compared to "Mediterranean diet" and "sports nutrition" categories. (F=7.189, P<0.001). Commercial web pages had a significantly lower credibility score compared to institutional and other web page types (H=17.987, P<0.001). Ranking order of each web page was related to its total quality score (P=0.04) but not to its credibility (P=0.241). CONCLUSIONS: Monitoring the accuracy, comprehensiveness and consistency of health-related information on the internet is an important public health issue since there are popular web pages that are regarded as of high quality but they do not always provide reliable information. Health professionals and especially dieticians should provide consumer training on how to search for and appraise nutritional information from the internet.

Surgical management in lung metastases from colorectal cancer.

BACKGROUND: Colorectal cancer is a non-aggressive slow-growing disease. Surgery is often considered for the management of metastases. Chemotherapeutical agents may offer tumor reduction but radical tumor remission can only be achieved by surgery. The aim of the present study was to show the evolution of patients with lung metastases from colorectal cancer, treated with surgery. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Five hundred and seventy-nine (male 327, female 252, median age 60 years [range 30-87 years], disease stage IV) patients with colorectal cancer were evaluated. Histology showed adenocarcinoma with 94% moderate differentiation. Sixty-six patients (11.40%) had only lung metastasis (single or multiple deposits). Of these 66 patients, 57 were treated with surgery (pneumonectomy, lobectomy or nodule excision) and in 52/57 (91.23%) the tumor was removed. RESULTS: In 29 patients (50.88%) the disease recurred 8 months after surgery, at the earliest; however, no recurrence was observed in 28 patients (49.12%) during 2-8 years of follow-up after the operation. Five-year survival was 32.69%. CONCLUSION: Metastectomy of lung metastasis from primary colorectal cancer may achieve long-term survival without recurrence in a large percentage of patients.

A modified mutagenic PCR-RFLP method for K-ras codon 12 and 13 mutations detection in NSCLC patients.

Evidence from many investigators has shown that mutations in the first exon of K- ras gene occur at elevated frequencies in lung, pancreatic and colon carcinoma and seem to be of prognostic importance. The aim of this study was to develop an effective method for the detection of K- ras mutations in codons 12 and 13 in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients in order to investigate correlation with clinical outcome. DNA was extracted from tumour and neighbouring non-neoplastic lung tissues from 70 patients and screened for codon 12 and 13 mutations. We applied a mutagenic PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism for both codon 12 and 13 mutation detection. Codon 12 mutation was identified in 20% of NSCLC patients, whereas no codon 13 mutation was detected. As expected, the respective non-neoplastic tissues exhibited no mutations. We observed an increased codon 12 mutation prevalence in adenocarcinoma comparing to other types of carcinomas. Follow-up for 29 patients with a mean time of 12 months indicates an increased relapse rate in NSCLC patients with the K- ras codon 12 mutation. Furthermore, a trend towards increased percentage of mutant samples was observed in the advanced stage group of patients. We provide evidence that our approach is a fast and reliable method for screening K- ras exon 1 mutations in tumour samples from NSCLC patients.