Hi All:

Fr. Mike-my continued best wishes for your steady progress.

I would appreciate it greatly if you all indulge me for a moment while I like make some comments about citations of research studies I have noticed are being passed along more frequently in our forum such as the one Gary mentions above on Cisplatin.

In general, most medical and nursing studies have as their intent examining a phenomenon, such as oral cancer,in a comprehensive way that will in turn,provide more information about a condition and encourage changes in practice that will improve outcomes for our patients.

As a nurse educator and doctoral student, I spend alot of time reading studies on a variety of topics inlcuding oral cancer which in now part of the focus of my dissertation in which I will be looking at emotional effects on caregivers of those with oral cancer. Stay tuned for a survey to be posted on this website in the coming months.

I would urge Gary and others to please use caution when citing studies out of context without the benefit of careful comparative analysis of the data including the statistical information which may or not be credible. While Gary raises an interesting point about the Cisplatin study,one would need to review the entire report of the study including the number of partipants and study variables before making a call that it is successful and recommending a treatment to others.

It is true that all of us should ask each doctor we see about their knowledge of current research data pertaining to oral cancer. However, the darker side is that not all studies are pure and some researchers both select subjects that will make results look good (the recruitment pitch) and/or lump together subjects that are apples and oranges such as the 35 year old otherwise healthy person who has oral cancer in the same group as the 80 year old with diabetes,lung trouble, and oral cancer.Thus, it is hard to make sense of the conclusions in some of these cases.

The additional point I would like to make is that you need to derive information from several places (such as the American Cancer Society) and hold it against peer reviewed journals such as those that pertain to head and neck pathologies that may provide the same or different data.Scrutiny and comparison are key to the research process as is being a healthy cynic.

Gary, I want to commend the degree of legwork you are clearly doing to obtain information on oral cancer and share it with others here. I would ask you to please tread cautiously when citing studies as a lay person. I am not meaning to be offensive in any way but even those of us who look at studies regularly typically consult with others in our fields to compare interpretations before making recommendations to patients.

Thanks for listening,

Kim