Efficacy of Implementing Home Care Using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing in Reducing Stress of Patients with Gastrointestinal Cancer

Background: Gastrointestinal cancer is the third most common types of cancer in the world which leads to a lot of stress among sufferers. Pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches are used to treat stress induced by serious diseases. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) technique is considered as one of non-pharmacological method for decreasing patient's stress. Objective: This study was conducted to determine the effect of home care using EMDR technique on the stress of patients with gastrointestinal cancer. Materials and Methods: The current semi-experimental study was performed on patients with gastrointestinal cancer residing in Ilam, Iran. The patients were randomly divided into two groups of intervention (n=30) and control (n=30). Home care was provided for intervention group in patients' homes which included 2 sessions (a total of 60 sessions for all patients). Each session lasted for 45 to 60 minutes according to EMDR protocol. The data were analyzed using SPSS (version 16). Results: The findings of this study showed that most of patients were male (36, 60), had diploma degrees (44, 73.3), had a monthly income less than 500 thousand (38, 63.3), were married (39, 65 ). The mean age of the patients was 69.18 +/- 11.58 years. No statistically significant difference was observed between two groups before the intervention in terms of patients' perceived stress (P>0.05). However, efficacy and perceived distress of the intervention group significantly was decreased following the intervention (P<0.05). Conclusions: According to the findings regarding the impact of home care using EMDR technique on reducing stress in patients with gastrointestinal cancer, the implementation of this intervention and provision of education for patients are recommended to expand the nursing duty to community health wards as well as to improve the health status of patients

Effects of Continuous Care Model on Blood Pressure in Patients with Type II Diabetes

Introduction: One of the main problems encountered by type II diabetes patients is high Blood Pressure (BP). Continuous care is the standard process of making effective, mutual, and continuous relationships between patients and nurses as healthcare providers. Continuous Care Model (CCM) can help the nurses in identifying needs, problems, and sensitisations of the patients and encourage them to maintain and enhance their health status. Aim: This study aimed to investigate the effects of CCM on the BP trends of patients with type II diabetes in llam city. Materials and Methods: This quasi - experimental research was conducted in 80 patients with type II diabetes. Subjects were selected using cluster sampling method and then were randomly divided into intervention and control groups. Interventions based on the CCM were in the form of training sessions that were conducted for three weeks. Consequently, continuous care consultations, control, and assessment were conducted for nine weeks. A questionnaire on demographic characteristics and a BP recording device was used to collect the data obtained before intervention and 1-3 months after intervention. Then, descriptive and inferential tests (ANOVA, repeated measures, chi-square) were used for data analysis. Results: Findings revealed that the mean BP (measured in mmHg) scores of the CCM (systolic, 133.22 +/- 3.98; diastolic, 86.00 +/- 2.96) and control groups (systolic, 133.65 +/- 2.10; diastolic 84.62 +/- 2.72) before intervention were not significant (p>0.05); however, after intervention, a significant difference was observed between the mean BP (measured in mmHg) scores of the CCM (systolic, 127.52 +/- 3.13; diastolic, 80.75 +/- 1.97) and control groups (systolic, 133.65 +/- 2.25; diastolic, 83.87 +/- 2.12) (p<0.05). Conclusion: CCM is suggested to be effective in managing the BP and can be applied to improve the health behaviour in patients with type II diabetes

Seroepidemiology of rubella, measles, HBV, HCV and B19 virus within women in child bearing ages (Saravan City of Sistan and Bloochastan Province)

Present survey basically focused on women between 15-45 years of age resident in a town of Sistan and Baluchistan province named as Saravan city located in border of Pakistan-Iran in order to find out the seropositivity against the viruses in child bearing ages in the above stated under study community. This descriptive cross-sectional study was carried-out from 2001 up to 2002. Saravan town was divided into 4 geographical areas and each area was further sub-divided into 10 blocks and in each block 10 families were chosen randomly. In the next step by referring to each family from the chosen married women with specified age i.e., 15-45 years, 5 mL blood was collected. Serum was then separated and stored at -20°C before the assay. ELISA kit was employed to detect anti B19, anti rubella, anti measles, anti HBV and anti HCV antibody. Furthermore during samples collection a questionnaire filled for each woman under study. This study showed that 89.6% of women understudy were seropositive against measles, rubella (96.2%), B19 (59.2%), HCV (0.8%) and HBV (19.8%), respectively. According to the results of no serious problem with rubella in this area; But, about measles, the present immunity against measles in this area is insufficient. It seems that incidence of B19 infection in this region is same as other places in Iran. The rate of seropositivity against HBV and HCV indicated of these viruses circulating in the population in this area. © 2007 Academic Journals

Saliency Benchmarking Made Easy: Separating Models, Maps and Metrics

Dozens of new models on fixation prediction are published every year and compared on open benchmarks such as MIT300 and LSUN. However, progress in the field can be difficult to judge because models are compared using a variety of inconsistent metrics. Here we show that no single saliency map can perform well under all metrics. Instead, we propose a principled approach to solve the benchmarking problem by separating the notions of saliency models, maps and metrics. Inspired by Bayesian decision theory, we define a saliency model to be a probabilistic model of fixation density prediction and a saliency map to be a metric-specific prediction derived from the model density which maximizes the expected performance on that metric given the model density. We derive these optimal saliency maps for the most commonly used saliency metrics (AUC, sAUC, NSS, CC, SIM, KL-Div) and show that they can be computed analytically or approximated with high precision. We show that this leads to consistent rankings in all metrics and avoids the penalties of using one saliency map for all metrics. Our method allows researchers to have their model compete on many different metrics with state-of-the-art in those metrics: "good" models will perform well in all metrics.Comment: published at ECCV 201

Antimicrobial resistance of Shigella spp. isolated from diarrheal patients in Zahedan

One of the great challenges in the treatment of infectious diseases is the resistance of pathogenic bacteria against antibiotics, and antibiotic resistance to Shigella is broadly observed in different parts of the world. The object of this study was to determine Shigella antibiotic resistance pattern against the antibiotics such as ampicillin, amoxicillin, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, chloramphenicol, nalidixic acid, ciprofloxacin and ceftriaxone. In this cross-sectional study, a total of 147 Shigella strains were collected from the diarrheic patients referring to different medical centers of Zahedan. Specific antisera were used for serotyping of isolated Shigella and their antibiotic resistance patterns were determined by standard Kirby-Bauer method. Of the 147 studied Shigella strains, 102 (69.3) belonged to S. flexneri, 32 (21.7) to S. dysenteriae, 11 (7.4) to S. boydii, and 2 (1.36) to S. sonnei species. The isolated strains showed resistance to ampicillin (99.3), trimethoprimsulfamethoxazole (52) and nalidixic acid (1.3), but there was no resistance against ciprofloxacin and ceftriaxone. According to the findings, it is suggested that antibiotics should not be used without laboratory testing (antibiogram). © 2008 Tehran University of Medical Sciences

'Part'ly first among equals: Semantic part-based benchmarking for state-of-the-art object recognition systems

An examination of object recognition challenge leaderboards (ILSVRC, PASCAL-VOC) reveals that the top-performing classifiers typically exhibit small differences amongst themselves in terms of error rate/mAP. To better differentiate the top performers, additional criteria are required. Moreover, the (test) images, on which the performance scores are based, predominantly contain fully visible objects. Therefore, `harder' test images, mimicking the challenging conditions (e.g. occlusion) in which humans routinely recognize objects, need to be utilized for benchmarking. To address the concerns mentioned above, we make two contributions. First, we systematically vary the level of local object-part content, global detail and spatial context in images from PASCAL VOC 2010 to create a new benchmarking dataset dubbed PPSS-12. Second, we propose an object-part based benchmarking procedure which quantifies classifiers' robustness to a range of visibility and contextual settings. The benchmarking procedure relies on a semantic similarity measure that naturally addresses potential semantic granularity differences between the category labels in training and test datasets, thus eliminating manual mapping. We use our procedure on the PPSS-12 dataset to benchmark top-performing classifiers trained on the ILSVRC-2012 dataset. Our results show that the proposed benchmarking procedure enables additional differentiation among state-of-the-art object classifiers in terms of their ability to handle missing content and insufficient object detail. Given this capability for additional differentiation, our approach can potentially supplement existing benchmarking procedures used in object recognition challenge leaderboards.Comment: Extended version of our ACCV-2016 paper. Author formatting modifie

Investigating the relationship between mother-child bonding and maternal mental health

Background: Mother-child bonding is rooted in the affective relationship between mother and child that is shaped during pregnancy and leads to the mental growth of infants. Objectives: This study was conducted to determine the relationship between mother-child bonding and maternal mental health in Ilam. Methods: In this descriptive-analytical study, 300 mothers in Ilam were selected using a two-stage cluster sampling method. The demographic characteristics questionnaire, the mother-infant bonding scale, Spielberger anxiety inventory, and edinburgh postnatal depression scale constituted the data collection instruments in this study, which were completed in the eighth to tenth postnatal week. Data were analyzed in SPSS via descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) and inferential tests (t tests and ANOVA). Results: The results of this study revealed that the mean and standard deviation of the obtained mother-child bonding scores were 38.48±12.86. Weakened mother-child bonding and risk of child abuse comprised the highest and lowest frequencies, respectively. Mother-child bonding had a statistically significant association with mothers' state anxiety, trait anxiety, and depression, and these variables affected mother-child bonding (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Considering the relationship between mother-child bonding and maternal mental health, proper screening is required to pursue secondary prevention in pregnant mothers. In addition, it is essential to perform necessary interventions to improve maternal mental health to facilitate better mother-child bonding. © 2018, Journal of Comprehensive Pediatrics

Investigating the relationship between mother-child bonding and maternal mental health

Background: Mother-child bonding is rooted in the affective relationship between mother and child that is shaped during pregnancy and leads to the mental growth of infants. Objectives: This study was conducted to determine the relationship between mother-child bonding and maternal mental health in Ilam. Methods: In this descriptive-analytical study, 300 mothers in Ilam were selected using a two-stage cluster sampling method. The demographic characteristics questionnaire, the mother-infant bonding scale, Spielberger anxiety inventory, and edinburgh postnatal depression scale constituted the data collection instruments in this study, which were completed in the eighth to tenth postnatal week. Data were analyzed in SPSS via descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) and inferential tests (t tests and ANOVA). Results: The results of this study revealed that the mean and standard deviation of the obtained mother-child bonding scores were 38.48±12.86. Weakened mother-child bonding and risk of child abuse comprised the highest and lowest frequencies, respectively. Mother-child bonding had a statistically significant association with mothers' state anxiety, trait anxiety, and depression, and these variables affected mother-child bonding (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Considering the relationship between mother-child bonding and maternal mental health, proper screening is required to pursue secondary prevention in pregnant mothers. In addition, it is essential to perform necessary interventions to improve maternal mental health to facilitate better mother-child bonding. © 2018, Journal of Comprehensive Pediatrics

Relationship between knowledge-skill and importance of physical examination for children admitted to infectious wards: Examining nurses' points of view

Background: A careful, timely, and accurate examination of patients by nurses provides grounds for maintaining and improving patients' safety in hospitals. Proper examination of the health status of children and, consequently, an accurate nursing diagnosis can accelerate their recovery and can have positive effects on the family. Objectives: This study aimed to determine the relationship between knowledge-skill and the importance of physical examination of children admitted to infectious wards from the perspective of nurses working in Ilam hospitals in 2017. Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 150 nurses were selected using purposive sampling. To collect data, the demographic information questionnaire, physical examination knowledge-skill scale, and physical examination importance questionnaire were employed. Data were analyzed using the SPSS version 18. In addition, descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, frequency, and percentage) and inferential tests (independent and paired sample t-tests) were used. Results: The findings revealed that the acquired knowledge-skill mean score was 100.86 out of 200. The nurses exhibited higher levels of knowledge-skill with regard to controlling vital signs, assessment of respiratory effort, observation of skin color, and touching the extremities to check the body temperature. In contrast, they exhibited lower levels of knowledge-skill in terms of examination of the breast to assess lumps, examination of the spine, assessing how the patient is talking, and listening to lung sounds. Additionally, there was a significant positive correlation between knowledge-skill and the importance of pediatric physical examinations (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Considering that the mean score of nurses in terms of the knowledge-skill required for conducting pediatric physical examination was low, appropriate interventions should be planned by nursing managers to improve the status of nurses' knowledge-skill in this field, in order to ensure the use of the necessary procedures for effective nursing practice. © 2018, Journal of Comprehensive Pediatrics

Relationship between knowledge-skill and importance of physical examination for children admitted to infectious wards: Examining nurses' points of view

Background: A careful, timely, and accurate examination of patients by nurses provides grounds for maintaining and improving patients' safety in hospitals. Proper examination of the health status of children and, consequently, an accurate nursing diagnosis can accelerate their recovery and can have positive effects on the family. Objectives: This study aimed to determine the relationship between knowledge-skill and the importance of physical examination of children admitted to infectious wards from the perspective of nurses working in Ilam hospitals in 2017. Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 150 nurses were selected using purposive sampling. To collect data, the demographic information questionnaire, physical examination knowledge-skill scale, and physical examination importance questionnaire were employed. Data were analyzed using the SPSS version 18. In addition, descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, frequency, and percentage) and inferential tests (independent and paired sample t-tests) were used. Results: The findings revealed that the acquired knowledge-skill mean score was 100.86 out of 200. The nurses exhibited higher levels of knowledge-skill with regard to controlling vital signs, assessment of respiratory effort, observation of skin color, and touching the extremities to check the body temperature. In contrast, they exhibited lower levels of knowledge-skill in terms of examination of the breast to assess lumps, examination of the spine, assessing how the patient is talking, and listening to lung sounds. Additionally, there was a significant positive correlation between knowledge-skill and the importance of pediatric physical examinations (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Considering that the mean score of nurses in terms of the knowledge-skill required for conducting pediatric physical examination was low, appropriate interventions should be planned by nursing managers to improve the status of nurses' knowledge-skill in this field, in order to ensure the use of the necessary procedures for effective nursing practice. © 2018, Journal of Comprehensive Pediatrics