Heart surgery waiting time: Assessing the effectiveness of an action

Background: Waiting time is an index assessing patient satisfaction, managerial effectiveness and horizontal equity in providing health care. Although heart surgery centers establishment is attractive for politicians. They are always faced with the question of to what extent they solve patient’s problems. Objectives: The objective of this study was to evaluate factors influencing waiting time in patients of heart surgery centers, and to make recommendations for health-care policy-makers for reducing waiting time and increasing the quality of services from this perspective. Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed in 2013. After searching articles on PubMed, Elsevier, Google Scholar, Ovid, Magiran, IranMedex, and SID, a list of several criteria, which relate to waiting time, was provided. Afterwards, the data on waiting time were collected by a researcher-structured checklist from 156 hospitalized patients. The data were analyzed by SPSS 16. The Kolmogorov Smirnov and Shapiro tests were used for determination of normality. Due to the non-normal distribution, non-parametric tests, such as Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney were chosen for reporting significance. Parametric tests also used reporting medians. Results: Among the studied variables, just economic status had a significant relation with waiting time (P = 0.37). Fifty percent of participants had diabetes, whereas this estimate was 43.58% for high blood pressure. As the cause of delay, 28.2% of patients reported financial problems, 18.6% personal problem and 13.5% a delay in providing equipment by the hospital. Conclusions: It seems the studied hospital should review its waiting time arrangements and detach them, as far as possible, from subjective and personal (specialists) decisions. On the other hand, ministries of health and insurance companies should consider more financial support. It is also recommend that hospitals should arrange preoperational psychiatric consultation for increasing patients’ emotionally readiness. © 2015, Iranian Red Crescent Medical Journal

Characteristics of high-risk sexual behaviors for human immunodeficiency virus infection among Iranian drug abusers

Objectives: This study was conducted to estimate the prevalence and the associated factors of high-risk sexual behaviors among drug abusers referred to a methadone clinic in Gorgan, the capital of Golestan province in the northeast of Iran, to help health care decision makers on designing interventional programs. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 400 drug abusers referred to our methadone clinic were evaluated for high-risk sexual behavior. A logistic regression model was fitted for the association between independent variables and high-risk sexual behavior. Results: Approximately a quarter of patients (25.5%) had high-risk sexual behavior among which 47% had not used a condom in their last sexual contact. Drug abusers who had poor economic status had a lower chance of high-risk sexual behavior than those with good economic status (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 0.35, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.13-0.96). Also, 1-year increase in age reduced the chance by 6% (AOR = 0.94, 95% CI = 0.91-0.98). Heroin abusers, compared with opium abusers, had a duplicated chance of having high-risk sex (AOR = 2.11, 95% CI = 1.12-3.96). Conclusion: According to this study, high-risk sexual behavior in the drug abusers referred to methadone clinic was associated with younger age, good economic status, and heroin addiction. Hence, in interventional planning, more attention should be paid to young drug abusers, patients with good economic status, and heroin addicts as well. Copyright © 2012 American Society of Addiction Medicine

Day-ahead power system scheduling considering water consumption in power plants

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Power generation consumes a substantial amount of water in the power industry. In order to address the impact of water consumption restriction on the power generation, this paper proposes a security-constrained unit commitment (SCUC) formulation considering water consumption impact as an additional constraint. To this end, the water consumption in power plants is formulated. Consequently, the SCUC is extended to consider the consumed water volume as a restricting factor. A procedure is introduced to investigate the most appropriate point of power generation operation to save a vital amount of water by raising reasonable generation costs. The objective of the proposed model is to minimize the generation cost, while water consumption is considered as an additional constraint of the problem. The proposed method is then applied on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 118-bus standard test system. It is shown that a dramatic amount of water volume can be saved in the industry by exploiting rationally higher costs in the power generation

Systematic review of priority setting studies in health research in the Islamic Republic of Iran

الهدف: أجرينا مراجعة منهجية وقَيَّمنا جودة تقارير تحديد الأولويات في البحوث الصحية في جمهورية إيران الإسلامية. طرق البحث: بحثنا في قواعد البيانات باللغتين الإنجليزية والفارسية من يناير/كانون الثاني إلى يوليو/تموز 2016 لاستخراج التقارير (التي يعود تاريخها حتى ديسمبر/كانون الأول 2015) حول تحديد الأولويات في البحوث الصحية في جمهورية إيران الإسلامية. أنشأنا قائمة تساعد في استخراج البيانات من الدراسات المحددة. ودرسنا المقالات بالتفصيل وأجرينا تحليلاً للمحتوى. وسجَّلنا العناصر ذات الصلة وحلَّلناها باستخدام برنامج ميكروسوفت - إكسل. النتائج: حددنا 36 مقالة. وشملت 8 مقالات جميع أصحاب المصلحة الرئيسيين. وقد استخدم ما يقرب من نصف المقالات معايير صالحة للترتيب. وتبين لنا أن الشفافية متحققة في 13 مقالة. وقد لاحظنا أنه تم تجاهل القواعد واللوائح المعمول بها في الأصل في 26 مقالة. بينما روعيت خطة التنفيذ في 9 مقالات، وتم توضيح تحليل السياق في 3 مقالات فقط. الاستنتاج: إن تطوير حزم معيارية لتحديد الأولويات وتدريب الباحثين وتحسين قدرة المنظمات قد يحسِّن من جودة دراسات تحديد الأولويات في المستقبل. مراجعة منهجية لدراسات تحديد الأولويات في البحوث الصحية في جمهورية إيران الإسلامية. عباس بدخستان، محمد عرب، آرش رشيديان، مهين قلي بور، إلهام محبي، كاظم زنده دل. الخلفية: أجريت عدة دراسات حول تحديد الأولويات في البحوث في بلدان مختلفة، بما في ذلك جمهورية إيران الإسلامية. Background: Several research priority-setting studies have been conducted in different countries, including the Islamic Republic of Iran. Aims: We conducted a systematic review and evaluated the quality of the priority-setting reports about health research in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Methods: English and Farsi databases were searched from January to July 2016 to extract reports (up to December 2015) about priority setting in health research in the Islamic Republic of Iran. We constructed a checklist to extract data from the identified studies. Articles were studied in detail and content analysis was carried out. Relevant items were scored and analysed using Microsoft Excel. Results: We identified 36 articles. Eight articles involved all the main stakeholders. About half the articles used valid criteria for ranking. Transparency was fulfilled in 13 articles. Upstream rules and regulations were ignored in 26 articles. An implementation plan was considered in 9 articles and context analysis was demonstrated in only 3. Conclusions: Developing standard packages for priority setting, training of researchers and improving the capacity of organizations may improve the quality of priority-setting studies in the future. Copyright © World Health Organization (WHO) 2018. Some rights reserved. This work is available under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/igo). Analyse systématique des études concernant l’établissement des priorités en matière de recherche en santé en République islamique d’Iran. Contexte: Plusieurs études sur l’établissement des priorités ont été menées dans différents pays, notamment en République islamique d’Iran. Objectif: Nous avons effectué une analyse systématique et avons évalué la qualité des rapports concernant l’établissement des priorités en matière de recherche en santé en République islamique d’Iran. Méthodes: Des recherches ont été effectuées dans les bases de données en anglais et en farsi entre janvier et juillet 2016 afin de trouver des rapports (jusqu’à décembre 2015) concernant l’établissement des priorités en matière de recherche en santé en République islamique d’Iran. Nous avons établi une liste de contrôle pour les critères en vue de l’extraction des données des études identifiées. Les articles ont été examinés en détail et une analyse de contenu a été effectuée. Les points pertinents ont été notés et analysés à l’aide de Microsoft Excel. Résultats: Nous avons identifié 36 articles. Huit articles impliquaient l’ensemble des principales parties prenantes. Près de la moitié des articles utilisaient des critères de classification valides. Treize (13) articles faisaient preuve de transparence ; 26 articles ignoraient les règles et réglementations en vigueur. Un plan d’application était suivi dans 9 articles et seuls 3 mettaient en avant une analyse du contexte. Conclusion: L’élaboration d’ensembles de normes en matière d’établissement des priorités, la formation des chercheurs et l’amélioration de la capacité des organisations pourraient avoir des répercussions positives sur la qualité des prochaines études concernant l’établissement des priorités

Optimized water consumption considering power plants efficiency in power system generation

© 2019 IEEE. In order to generate adequate electricity energy, conventional power plants utilize dramatic volume of water resources. Different methods such as replacing cutting-edge technologies of facilities have been proposed to diminish water consumption in this industry. Most of the approaches are considered as medium or long-term solution which requires substantial investment costs. Meanwhile, because of the process and technology, natural gas-fired power plants need less water among conventional power plants. Therefore, shifting unit commitment planning toward these power plants would aid to save water consumption. Nevertheless, overlooking combined cycle power plants can perform negative impact on power plant efficiency, and it may increase power generation cost. This paper aims to investigate multi-objective optimization problem to minimize water consumption by maximizing the power generation efficiency. Hence, this method contemplates economic dispatch by selecting more efficient and less water required power plants. The proposed model is examined on an IEEE 24-bus test system to address the results, and it is compared with the conventional economic dispatch problem to clarify the impact of the proposed approach. According to the results, some relevant conclusions are drawn

Social determinants and high risk behaviours in drug users under methadone treatment in Golestan province, North Iran

Introduction Drug users’ health is a product of drug-effects and risk behaviours. Social determinants can shape some health behaviours. There has been little research on social determinants and risk behaviours related to drug use in Iran. We aimed to estimate this in patients undergoing methadone treatment in north Iran.Methods 400 addicts were recruited from methadone clinics in 2009–2010. A self-designed questionnaire with excellent reliability was used to determine those with and without high risk behaviours. ORs with 95% CIs were estimated by logistic regression. Ethics approval was obtained from Tehran University.Results There was significant difference between the two study groups (with and without high risk behaviours) in economic status, drug type, administration route, age, and drug abuse onset age. Education level was significantly lower in women. One quarter experienced homeless, 62% had no support from any insurance or supportive organisations, only 26% had constant employment and over 50% had prison history. 12.5% were injection users and 14% shared syringes. One quarter reported high risk sexual behaviour and 69.4% had not used condoms in last their last sex encounter (significantly lower in women). A decrease of one year in age was associated with decreased drug use onset age and increased sexual risk behaviours by 6%(AOR=0.94, 95% CI 0.91 to 0.98) and10% (AOR=0.91, 95% CI 0.85 to 0.97) respectively. Poor economic status reduced risk sexual behaviour (AOR=0.35, 95% CI 0.13 to 0.96). Prison history increased injection behaviour more than twice (AOR=2.89, 95% CI 1.4 to 5.95).Conclusions These findings illustrate that interventions are needed in young heroin users even in those with a good economic state