Journal and News Scan

A landmark article summarizing the early clinical experience of using a cryopreserved aortic homograft with a customized internal stent for major airway replacement.

This overview of some recent social science flavored research identifies challenges associated with stigma attached to a lung cancer diagnosis.  These challenges include decreased participation in screening tests, noncompliance with therapy, and poor communication with treating physicians.

Propensity scores methods have proven incredibly useful in the analysis of observational datasets, as they allow for control of confounding variables. Moreover, they offer several benefits over the more ubiquitous multivariable regression approaches. Propensity score matching is a familiar tool, however there are several other propensity score-based methods, such as weighting and stratification. Benedetto and colleagues explore these different approaches and illustrate the methodology using a real-world example.

Sachdeva and Lanuti discuss the present status of cervical exenteration, a radical procedure utilized in the management of locally invasive cancers of the trachea, esophagus, and thyroid, as well as in recurrent tumors at the site of a tracheal stoma. Both a written review and video presentation are provided. Given the extensiveness of the dissection, resection, and subsequent reconstruction in this procedure, great care must be employed to select candidates who are the most likely to benefit. Long term outcomes of cervical exenteration have been reported to be equivalent to total laryngectomy. Anastomotic leak, tracheal stoma dehiscence, erosion of the innominate artery, and flap necrosis are all established risks, and long term survival is ultimately dependent upon the extensiveness of the underlying disease process.