Mohammed El-Shahat

We conducted this study to describe the symptom burden among hospitalized patients with cancer in a Kuwaiti cancer center. Twenty physical symptoms were assessed in 45 patients with cancer. The majority (82%) of patients had an advanced incurable cancer and 42% were receiving best supportive care only. The median number of symptoms per patient was 6.4 ± 2.8. The most common symptoms were pain (82%), weakness/fatigue (80%), anorexia (67%), weight loss (49%), and dyspnea (42%). Pain was the most distressing symptom in 31% of patients, followed by dyspnea (24%) and weakness/fatigue (11%). The high prevalence of advanced disease and the demonstrated high symptom burden mandate the initiation and development of culturally sensitive palliative care models, especially hospital-based ones, to relieve the suffering of patients with cancer in Kuwait.

{We present a systematic calculation of α-decay half-lives of even-even heavy and superheavy nuclei in the framework of the preformed α model. The microscopic α-daughter nuclear interaction potential is calculated by double-folding the density distributions of both α and daughter nuclei with a realistic effective Michigan three-Yukawa nucleon-nucleon interaction, and the microscopic Coulomb potential is calculated by folding the charge density distributions of the two interacting nuclei. The half-lives are found to be sensitive to the density dependence of the nucleon-nucleon interaction and the implementation of the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization condition inherent in the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approach. The α-decay half-lives obtained agree reasonably well with the available experimental data. Moreover, the study has been extended to the newly observed superheavy nuclei. The interplay of closed-shell effects in α-decay calculations is investigated. The α-decay calculations give the closed-shell effects of known spherical magicities