1,720,961 research outputs found
The experiences of hot flushes after breast cancer
No full textAs survival from breast cancer increases, there is a corresponding rise in the number of women living with the long-term consequences of its treatment. Distressing menopausal hot flushes occur in many of these women. This article reports on interviews conducted with 8 women, exploring the experience of hot flushes after breast cancer. Women's accounts of hot flushes varied from being a mild sensation to an intensely unpleasant sensation affecting the whole body and accompanied by drenching perspiration. Flushes affected all aspects of the women's lives, including sleeping, clothing, social situations, intimate relationships, and ability to work. Emotionally, women talked about being out of control. Having cancer and menopause simultaneously made it more difficult for the women to cope, and cancer treatment could cause flushing. The women used many strategies to help relieve their difficulties. Some resorted to hormone replacement therapy, whereas others turned to herbal medications and other alternative interventions such as acupuncture. Most women adopted behavioral strategies to try to regain control. Ultimately, they found that control was gained by attitude of mind. Cognitive behavioral techniques may enhance the sense of control and contribute to coping during hot flushes
The experience of hot flushes after breast cancer
No full textAs survival from breast cancer increases, there is a corresponding rise in the number of women living with the long-term consequences of its treatment. Distressing menopausal hot flushes occur in many of these women. This article reports on interviews conducted with 8 women, exploring the experience of hot flushes after breast cancer. Women's accounts of hot flushes varied from being a mild sensation to an intensely unpleasant sensation affecting the whole body and accompanied by drenching perspiration. Flushes affected all aspects of the women's lives, including sleeping, clothing, social situations, intimate relationships, and ability to work. Emotionally, women talked about being out of control. Having cancer and menopause simultaneously made it more difficult for the women to cope, and cancer treatment could cause flushing. The women used many strategies to help relieve their difficulties. Some resorted to hormone replacement therapy, whereas others turned to herbal medications and other alternative interventions such as acupuncture. Most women adopted behavioral strategies to try to regain control. Ultimately, they found that control was gained by attitude of mind. Cognitive behavioral techniques may enhance the sense of control and contribute to coping during hot flushe
Menopausal hot flushes after breast cancer
Full text linkThe study aimed to improve understanding of the natural history and impact of hot flushes after breast cancer.Data were collected from women participating in an RCT of relaxation to reduce the incidence of flushes from breast cancer follow-up clinics from two hospitals in South-East England. Repondents were 150 women experiencing hot flushes following completion of primary treatment for breast cancer. This study utilized a flush diary, the Hot Flushes and Night Sweats Questionnaire (HFNSQ), Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy with Endocrine Subscale (FACT-ES) and Spielberger State/Trait Anxiety Index (STAI) as the main outcome measures. The study found that in this sample, 51 (34%) women experienced flushes more than fiveyears after diagnosis and 75 (50%) more than 5 years after menopause. Sleep disruption occurred in 90 women (72% of those that returned diaries), affecting half of the nights they recorded. The mean problem rating on the HFNSQ was 4.85 out of 10. A peak incidence of flushes was apparent around 10 a.m. in women taking tamoxifen. It was concluded that hot flushes after breast cancer may be long-lasting and cause sleeping difficulties for many women. Tamoxifen may affect the diurnal pattern of flushes. After breast cancer, the duration of flushes, potential distress and disruption to women’s lives should not be underestimated and appropriate interventions should be offered
A randomised controlled trial of relaxation to reduce hot flushes after breast cancer
No full textAims: Around 65% of women treated for breast cancer experience menopausal difficulties and 96% of these have hot flushes. For many women flushes can be severe and debilitating.Treatment options for the management of menopausal difficulties are limited by risks o fcancer recurrence and as yet there are few acceptable and effective strategies available to relieve hot flushes. This study was set up to test the effectiveness of relaxation training to reduce hot flushes.Procedures: A randomised, controlled trial was conducted on 150 women comparing a single relaxation training session (comprising stress management, muscle relaxation and deep breathing techniques) against usual care. Non parametric tests were conducted on the change in incidence and severity of flushes. Changes in distress due to flushes, problem factor and interference to daily life were measured (Hunter and Liao 1995) as well as STAI and FACT-ES quality of life. Significance levels were set at p<0.01 to allow for multiple testing.Major findings: Relaxation was found to be an effective intervention, which significantly reduced the incidence of hot flushes by 22% (p<0.001), the severity of flushes (p<0.01) and the distress caused by flushes (p=0.01).Significance and conclusions: Relaxation training may be a useful component of self-management measures for women who have had breast cancer in order to reduce the incidence and distress caused by hot flushes
Is it me or is it hot in here? A plea for more research into hot flushes
No full textWomen who have been treated for breast cancer identify vasomotor symptoms, such as hot flushes and night sweats, as a serious problem. These symptoms can be unpleasant, with a significant impact on daily life and sleep quality: It’s as though somebody has built a furnace inside of you and it’s your whole body. It starts almost at your feet and
works up and you just feel as though you are literally on fire inside and it’s trying to escape and you just want to escape but you can’t escape, there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do [1]. The social consequences of this embarrassing experience can affect employment, personal relationships and quality of life: Umm, when they were at their worst I would be yeah pretty much dripping in, in err, various places umm err from really from the nose downwards; the lips; the neck; umm chest
and back; crooks of my arms. And I could, you know, often if I was sitting down I would get up and my trousers would be really wet and it would go right down to my toes [1]. Oestrogen replacement remains the most effective treatment for hot flushes. However, this is contraindicated in the majority of women with oestrogen-dependent breast cancer. An estimated 550 000 people live in the UK today with a diagnosis of breast cancer and up to 70% experience hot flushes [2e5], which are exacerbated by a lack of safe and effective management strategies [4]. Although hot flushes may occur for a number of reasons, including natural or chemotherapy-induced menopause,
they may also be side-effects of adjuvant hormonal therapies, such as tamoxifen and the aromatase inhibitors. Two recent clinical trials (aTTom [6] and ATLAS [7]) showed that 10 years of tamoxifen significantly reduces the risk of recurrence and breast cancer mortality. However, an increasing number of studies report that over 50% of
women do not adhere to 5 years of endocrine treatment with an associated increase in mortality [8]. The lack of effective management of vasomotor symptoms may be an important contributory factor to this lack of adherence [9]. The pathophysiology of hot flushes is poorly understood. Proposed mechanisms include altered peripheral vascular reactivity and a narrowed thermoneutral zone [10], although how this relates to oestrogen deprivation is not understood. Without a fuller understanding of the physiology, mechanisms and triggers it will be difficult to develop new targeted therapies. Adrienne Morgan says ‘I was diagnosed with breast cancer eight years ago and continue to take anti-oestrogen drugs because my cancer has returned. I have had a hot flush every 45 minutes for the last eight years. It is difficult to convey to anyone who has never had a hot flush how awful they are; exhausting, embarrassing, agitating.. I am fatigued, unable to work, sleep is only possible with medication and every morning my bed is soaked. I have tried everything. Only the SSRIs have some effect by reducing the severity of the hot flushes (venlafaxine made me feel horrible so I take Citalopram)but they make me anorgasmic. It surprises me that there is not more basic research being done into the causes of hot flushes. After all, most women will have them at some
stage in their lives - not just breast cancer patients - and now men with prostate cancer are getting them too’
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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