The Middle East has been experiencing an ongoing political conflict for the past several decades. This situation has been characterized by hostility often leading to violence of all sources. At times, such a conflict led to the outbreak of a military war, which was followed by an enmity between religious, ethnic, cultural, and national populations. In such environmental situations, palliative care professionals often confront major challenges including bias, mistrust, and mutual suspicion between patients and their treating clinicians. In order to overcome such obstacles, while rendering palliative care services, all professionals involved need careful planning and execution of their treatment plans. The latter is however possible, and sometimes successful even across lines of conflict, thereby promoting understanding, mutual respect, and tolerance between the involved communities and individuals.

Our findings indicate that cancer disclosure at the Children's Cancer Hospital is to a certain degree common; yet even when disclosure does take place, it is mainly in the absence of the child. Moreover, the information provided during the conversation may not be fully comprehended by the parent or the child because of the physician's misleading use of terms when disclosing the disease. Therefore, better practice should be developed for disease disclosure, and proper communication should be established between the patients and the provider; patient autonomy should also have an influence in the clinical practice.

Palliative care is uprising in developing countries. The Children's Cancer Hospital Egypt 57357 palliative care service put the main concepts in pediatric palliation in consideration while facing the challenges and needs for these children and their families. The palliative care program developed will be connected to other centers in Egypt as well as further branches of the hospital in other Egyptian cities.

Background Marital status influences the presentation and outcome of various cancers. We explored the relationship between marital status and survival of uveal melanoma (UM) and factors influencing this relationship. Methods We conducted a retrospective cohort study on patients diagnosed with UM and registered in the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results program between 1973 and 2017. Cox regression model was conducted to calculate the hazard ratio of overall and cancer-specific survival rate and delineate the effect of each confounder. Results The study involved 10,557 patients with a male-to-female ratio of 1:1.1. Most of the diagnosed patients were aged between 40 and 79 years (81%). Married patients (62%) represented the majority, followed by singles (12%), widowed (11%), and then divorced patients (7%). Single patients were the youngest group (mean age of 59.3 years) while widowed patients were the oldest (mean age of 75.8 years). In the Cox regression model for overall survival, married and single patients exhibited the best overall survival (no significant difference in between them), both surpassing divorced and widowed patients. Married patients were at a significantly lower risk to die from UM than divorced patients. Female patients and younger age groups showed the best overall and cancer-specific survival. Conclusion Maintained marriages improved the survival of UM patients. Widowed and divorced patients should be included in specially designed support programs during their cancer management.

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