Risk factors for the occurrence of ampullary tumors: A case-control study

The need for a cancer exposome atlas: a scoping review

BACKGROUND

Despite advances in understanding genetic susceptibility to cancer, much of cancer heritability remains unidentified. At the same time, the makeup of industrial chemicals in our environment only grows more complex. This gap in knowledge on cancer risk has prompted calls to expand cancer research to the comprehensive, discovery-based study of nongenetic environmental influences, conceptualized as the "exposome."

METHODS

Our scoping review aimed to describe the exposome and its application to cancer epidemiology and to study design limitations, challenges in analytical methods, and major unmet opportunities in advanced exposome profiling methods that allow the quantification of complex chemical exposure profiles in biological matrices. To evaluate progress on incorporating measurements of the exposome into cancer research, we performed a review of such "cancer exposome" studies published through August 2023.

RESULTS

We found that only 1 study leveraged untargeted chemical profiling of the exposome as a method to measure tens of thousands of environmental chemicals and identify prospective associations with future cancer risk. The other 13 studies used hypothesis-driven exposome approaches that targeted a set of preselected lifestyle, occupational, air quality, social determinant, or other external risk factors. Many of the included studies could only leverage sample sizes with less than 400 cancer cases (67% of nonecologic studies) and exposures experienced after diagnosis (29% of studies). Six cancer types were covered, most commonly blood (43%), lung (21%), or breast (14%) cancer.

CONCLUSION

The exposome is underutilized in cancer research, despite its potential to unravel complex relationships between environmental exposures and cancer and to inform primary prevention.

Accurate prediction of the lymph node status in ampullary duodenal carcinoma: potential guidance for clinical management

PURPOSE

This study aimed to identify the risk factors associated with ampullary duodenal carcinoma (a-DC) and develop a clinical model to dynamically and accurately predict the risk of lymph node metastasis (LNM) in a-DC patients.

METHODS

Data from 4077 patients (2004-2020) were extracted from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database to form a training cohort, while 173 cases (2010-2020) from Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital in China were used as an external validation cohort. A reliable LASSO-logistic method was employed to identify independent risk factors for a-DC LNM, and a nomogram was developed based on these factors to assess the risk of a-DC LNM. The nomogram was evaluated using the Akaike information criterion, misclassification error, area under the curve, and likelihood ratio test. Finally, the nomogram's accuracy and generalizability were externally validated..

RESULTS

After screening using LASSO and logistic regression four variables were identified as independent risk factors for a-DC LNM: sex (P < 0.001), tumor size (P < 0.001), grade (P < 0.001), and tumor extension (P < 0.001). The area under the curve of the nomogram was 74.8% in the training group and 88.9% in the external validation group. The calibration curves demonstrated that the LNM predictions made by the nomogram were in satisfactory agreement with the actual observed LNM. Additionally, the decision curve analysis curves indicated effective clinical utility of the nomogram.

CONCLUSIONS

A nomogram based on the LASSO-logistic analysis was constructed to predict a-DC LNM, demonstrating good performance and clinical application value.

Laparoscopic Transduodenal Ampullectomy for a High-Grade Dysplasia Tumor

Ampullary tumors occur rarely, and the only curative treatment is resection. The endoscopic approach is the most well-known and common treatment of choice. Open surgical resection is the usual treatment of choice in cases of unsuccessful endoscopic resection and big tumors. Although the technically challenging laparoscopic approach is not yet widespread, it is a feasible and safe method in well-selected patients. This case report focuses on the case of a 74-year-old male with high-grade dysplasia in the ampulla of Vater, who had an incomplete endoscopic resection. Therefore, we performed a laparoscopic transduodenal ampullectomy.