Scholars workbook

Current Project

Category: Oncology

Topics:

1. Breast (microchaptered)
2. Colorectal (microchaptered)
3. Small cell carcinoma of the lung (microchaptered)
4. Lung (microchaptered)
5. Skin (microchaptered)
6. Cervical (microchaptered)
7. Prostate (microchaptered)
8. Pancreatic
9. Brain
10. Liver
11. Leukemia (microchaptered)
    1. AML
    2. CML
    3. ALL
    4. CLL
    5. HCL
12. Melanoma
13. Ovarian cancer (microchaptered)

Guidelines Resources:

• American Academy of Family Physicians
• American College of Obstetricians and Gyencologists
• American College of Physicians
• American Society of Internal Medicine
• American Cancer Society
• American Gastroenterological Association
• American Geriatrics Society
• American Medical Association
• American Urological Association
• Canadian Task for Preventative Health Care
• National Institutes of Health
• U.S. Preventative Services Task Force
• Centers for Disease Control
• National Comprehensive Cancer Network

Plan

1. Develop microchapters for each topic.
2. We will assess oncology topics by prevalence and hazard ratios.
3. Starting with the most prevalent forms, we will pull all current and historically important guidelines documents.
4. From there, we will begin with creating a structure for the screening chapter. The purpose of the screening chapter is to describe methods used to search for early asymptomatic disease.

Things to consider:

• Why screen? To favorably modify the natural history of the disease, to improve morbidity, to reduce mortality (it is not usually a primary prevention but more often, a secondary prevention)
• What disease are appropriate for screening? Diseases that have serious consequences, diseases that respond better when treatment is given before symptom onset, prevalence of detectable preclinical phase of disease is high in population to be screened
• How do we assess whether a screening test is suitable?
• How do we assess whether a screening program works?
• What is the value of screening for those screened?

Why use guidelines? Guidelines task forces articulate the clinical consensus on the inherent shortcomings and advantages of diagnostic and evaluative measures. Guidelines allow for consistency across the community and attempt to minimize risk to the patient.

Secondary task: Find major clinical trials related to the cancer of interest. Isolate the appendix that contains the participating centers. Create a database of the centers and contact information. Solicit the participation of these centers for authorship on WikiDoc.