No abstract

The pharmacological treatment of cancer-related pain is unsatisfactory. Tetrodotoxin (TTX) has shown analgesia in preclinical models and clinical trials, but its clinical efficacy and safety have not been quantified. For this reason, our aim was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of the clinical evidence that was available. A systematic literature search was conducted in four electronic databases (Medline, Web of Science, Scopus, and ClinicalTrials.gov) up to 1 March 2023 in order to identify published clinical studies evaluating the efficacy and security of TTX in patients with cancer-related pain, including chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain. Five articles were selected, three of which were randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The number of responders to the primary outcome (≥30% improvement in the mean pain intensity) and those suffering adverse events in the intervention and placebo groups were used to calculate effect sizes using the log odds ratio. The meta-analysis showed that TTX significantly increased the number of responders (mean = 0.68; 95% CI: 0.19–1.16, p = 0.0065) and the number of patients suffering non-severe adverse events (mean = 1.13; 95% CI: 0.31–1.95, p = 0.0068). However, TTX did not increase the risk of suffering serious adverse events (mean = 0.75; 95% CI: −0.43–1.93, p = 0.2154). In conclusion, TTX showed robust analgesic efficacy but also increased the risk of suffering non-severe adverse events. These results should be confirmed in further clinical trials with higher numbers of patients.

Organizations constantly seek ways to improve their business processes. This often involves using digital technologies to enable process improvements. However, simply substituting existing technology with newer technology has limited value as compared to using the capabilities of digital technologies to introduce changes to business processes. Therefore, process analysts need to understand how the capabilities of digital technologies can be used to redesign business processes. In this paper, we conducted a systematic literature review and examined 40 case studies where digital technologies were used to redesign business processes. We identified that, within the context of business process improvement, capabilities of digitalization, communication, analytics, digital representation, and connectivity can enable business process redesign. Furthermore, we note that these capabilities enable applying nine redesign heuristics. Based on our review, we map how each capability can facilitate the implementation of specific redesign heuristics to improve a business process. Thus, our mapping can aid analysts in identifying candidate redesigns that capitalize on the capabilities of digital technologies.

No abstract