Interventions for basal cell carcinoma of the skin: systematic review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: To assess the effects of treatments for basal cell carcinoma. METHODS: Systematic review of randomised controlled trials. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Recurrence of basal cell carcinoma at three years or beyond, assessed clinically. STUDIES REVIEWED: Randomised controlled trials of interventions for histologically confirmed basal cell carcinoma (published and unpublished material; no language restrictions). RESULTS: 25 studies were identified, covering seven therapeutic categories. Only one study of surgical excision versus radiotherapy contained primary outcome data, which showed significantly more persistent tumours and recurrences in the radiotherapy group compared with surgery (odds ratio 0.09, 95% confidence interval 0.01 to 0.67). One study compared cryotherapy with surgery, with inconclusive results at one year. In a comparison of radiotherapy with cryotherapy, significantly more recurrences occurred at one year in the cryotherapy group. Preliminary studies suggest a short term success rate of 87-88% for imiquimod cream in the treatment of superficial basal cell carcinoma, although this cream has not been compared with surgery. No consistent evidence was found for the other treatment modalities. CONCLUSIONS: Little good quality research has been done on the treatments used for the most common cancer in humans. Most trials have included only people with basal cell carcinoma occurring at low risk sites. Only one trial measured recurrence at four years; recurrence rates at one year should be interpreted with caution. Surgery and radiotherapy seem to be the most effective treatments; surgery showed the lowest failure rates. Other treatments might have some use but need to be compared with surgery.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.031 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.011 | 0.009 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".