Function and strength declines in a client with radiation-induced brachial plexopathy: a case report
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Radiation-induced brachial plexopathy (RIBP) is a progressively disabling outcome of radiotherapy for a variety of cancers. This report describes measured declines over time in a client with very late RIBP, secondary to radiotherapy for breast cancer. CASE DESCRIPTION: After diagnosis of stage IIIA (right) breast cancer (age 50), this woman underwent bilateral mastectomy, chemotherapy and daily radiotherapy (25 sessions) to the right chest wall, supraclavicular and axillary lymph nodes. A neurological exam (age 72) showed diminished deep tendon reflexes in the right brachioradialis, biceps and triceps; nerve conduction tests revealed decreased amplitude of sensory and motor nerves in the right arm. Also, standardized measurements of grip and pinch strength were obtained by a hand therapist. The client was sent to a neurooncologist, who referred her to occupational therapists to update standardized assessments of grip/pinch strength and functional dexterity, as well as provide assistive technology and therapy suggestions. OUTCOMES: Grip strength decreased 28.1%, with recent grip strength < 50% of the median normative value for the dominant hand. Lateral pinch strength dropped by 67%, now 16% of normal. Lateral key/three-point pinch strength decreased by 95%, now 2.3% of normal. Functional dexterity decreased also in the affected hand, with astereognosis noted. DISCUSSION: This is the first report describing increasing deficits in RIBP using standardized measures of grip and pinch strength, manual dexterity and stereognosis. Sadly, there is no successful intervention to increase muscle strength in RIBP which results in progressive strength loss, as shown with this client's hand strength over three years.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
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".