Level of quality of life and health self-care in university students of health sciences at the National University of Villa María

The purpose of this study is the analysis of self - perceived quality of life and self-care of university students in their first years of Health Sciences Degrees at Instituto Académico Pedagógico de Ciencias Humanas (IAPCH) - National University of Villa María (UNVM). Methods: An observational, descriptive and correlational, cross-sectional design was implemented to conduct this study. It involved all the students in the first three years of the Medicine and Occupational Therapy degrees, with an estimated total of 280 students. The socio-demographics considered were: age, gender, origin and level of education of the immediate family members (father, mother and brother/sister). The Quality of Life assessment was carried out based on the SF-36 and the self-care assessment was performed according to the “Appraisal of the Capacity for Self-Care Agency Scale”. Results: Regarding quality of life, the Physical Component Summary (PCS) is higher than the Mental Component Summary (MCS) and with regard to the analysis based on gender, men revealed a higher perceived quality of life in both the physical and mental aspects. Women revealed a lower perceived quality of life regarding their physical functioning, emotional role, vitality, mental health, social role, bodily pain and general health. The analysis of self – care capacity showed that the total score in men and women corresponds to a medium level of self-care capacity, however, the highest proportion, in men as well as in women, was found in the category of low self-care capacity.Fil: Romero, D. E.. Universidad Nacional de Villa Maria. Instituto Academico de Ciencias Humanas; ArgentinaFil: Gili, Juan Antonio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. CEMIC-CONICET. Centro de Educaciones Médicas e Investigaciones Clínicas "Norberto Quirno". CEMIC-CONICET; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Villa Maria. Instituto Academico de Ciencias Humanas; ArgentinaFil: Trecco, P.. Universidad Nacional de Villa Maria. Instituto Academico de Ciencias Humanas; ArgentinaFil: Torres, V.. Universidad Nacional de Villa Maria. Instituto Academico de Ciencias Humanas; ArgentinaFil: Chiriotti, V.. Universidad Nacional de Villa Maria. Instituto Academico de Ciencias Humanas; ArgentinaFil: Fernández, A. R.. Universidad Nacional de Villa Maria. Instituto Academico de Ciencias Humanas; Argentin

MICRODOSIMETRIC SIMULATIONS OF CARBON IONS USING THE MONTE CARLO CODE FLUKA

Therapeutic carbon ion beams produce a complex and variable radiation field that changes along the penetration depth due to the high density of energy loss along the particle track together with the secondary particles produced by nuclear fragmentation reactions. An accurate physical characterisation of such complex mixed-radiation fields can be performed by measuring microdosimetric spectra with mini tissue-equivalent proportional counters (mini-TEPCs), which are one of the most accurate devices used in experimental microdosimetry. Numerical calculations with Monte Carlo codes such as FLUKA can be used to supplement experimental microdosimetric measurements performed with TEPCs, but the nuclear cross sections and fragmentation models need to be benchmarked with experimental data for different energies and scenarios. The aim of this work is to compare experimental carbon microdosimetric data measured with the mini TEPC with calculated microdosimetry spectra obtained with FLUKA for 12C ions of 189.5 MeV/u in the Bragg peak region

Equivalence of pure propane and propane-TE gases for Tissue microdosimetric measurements

A tissue-equivalent proportional counter (TEPC) simulates micrometric volumes of tissue, if the energy deposited in the counter cavity is the same as that in the tissue volume. Nevertheless, a TEPC measures only the ionizations created in the gas, which are later converted into imparted energy. Therefore, the equivalence of the simulated diameter in two gases should be based on the equality of the mean number of ions pairs in the gas rather than on the imparted energy. Propane-based tissue equivalent gas is the most commonly used gas mixture at present but it has the drawback that its composition may change with time. From this point of view, the use of pure propane offers practical advantages: higher gas gain and longer stability. In this work, microdosimetric measurements performed with pure propane, at site sizes between 0.05 mg/cm2 and 0.3 mg/cm2, demonstrate that the response of a propane-filled detector in gamma and in neutron fields is almost the same if an appropriate gas density is used

Mini-TEPC Microdosimetric Study of Carbon Ion Therapeutic Beams at CNAO

Mono-energetic carbon ion scanning beams of 195.2 MeV/u at the Italian National Centre for Oncological Hadrontherapy (CNAO) have been used to study the microdosimetric features of an “active” carbon ion beam used in hadrontherapy. A 30x30 mm2 area has been scanned by a 6 mm beam with scanning steps of 2 mm. A mini TEPC of 0.57 mm3 has been used to perform measurements in a water phantom at different depths on the beam axis. The detector small size allowed for measuring, with good spatial resolution, also inside the relatively small Bragg peak region and inside the distal edge, where the radiation quality varies quickly. In spite of the high event rate (up to ~ 105 s-1), no pile-up effects were observed. Results showed that the frequency-mean lineal energy scaled well with the absorbed dose. Moreover, the dose-mean lineal energy itself seemed to be a good descriptor of the radiation quality

Mini-TEPC Microdosimetric Study of Carbon Ion Therapeutic Beams at CNAO

Mono-energetic carbon ion scanning beams of 195.2 MeV/u at the Italian National Centre for Oncological Hadrontherapy (CNAO) have been used to study the microdosimetric features of an “active” carbon ion beam used in hadrontherapy. A 30x30 mm2 area has been scanned by a 6 mm beam with scanning steps of 2 mm. A mini TEPC of 0.57 mm3 has been used to perform measurements in a water phantom at different depths on the beam axis. The detector small size allowed for measuring, with good spatial resolution, also inside the relatively small Bragg peak region and inside the distal edge, where the radiation quality varies quickly. In spite of the high event rate (up to ~ 105 s-1), no pile-up effects were observed. Results showed that the frequency-mean lineal energy scaled well with the absorbed dose. Moreover, the dose-mean lineal energy itself seemed to be a good descriptor of the radiation quality

Monte Carlo tools to supplement experimental microdosimetric spectra

Tissue-equivalent proportional counters (TEPCs) are widely used in experimental microdosimetry for characterising the radi- ation quality in radiation protection and radiation therapy environments. Generally, TEPCs are filled with tissue-equivalent gas mixtures, at low gas pressure, to simulate tissue site sizes similar to the cell nucleus (1 or 2 mm). The TEPC response using Monte Carlo (MC) codes can be applied to supplement experimental measurements. Most of general-purpose MC codes currently available recourse to the condensed-history approach to model the electron transport and do not transport low-energy electrons (<1 keV), which can lead to systematic errors, especially in thin layers and in gas-condensed medium interfaces. In this work, a comparison between experimental microdosimetric spectra of 60Co and 137Cs radiation at different simulated sizes (from 1.0 to 3.0 mm) in pure propane versus simulated spectra obtained with two general-purpose codes FLUKA and PENELOPE, which include a detailed simulation of electron – photon transport in arbitrary materials, including gases, is presented

Microdosimetric measurements in the thermal neutron irradiation facility of LENA reactor

A twin TEPC with electric-field guard tubes has been constructed to be used to characterize the BNCT field of the irradiation facility of LENA reactor. One of the two mini TEPC was doped with 50 ppm of 10B in order to simulate the BNC events occurring in BNCT. By properly processing the two microdosimetric spectra, the gamma, neutron and BNC spectral components can be derived with good precision (~6%). However, direct measurements of 10B in some doped plastic samples, which were used for constructing the cathode walls, point out the scarce accuracy of the nominal 10B concentration value. The influence of the Boral® door, which closes the irradiation channel, has been measured. The gamma dose increases significantly (+ 51%) when the Boral® door is closed. The crypt-cell-regeneration weighting function has been used to measure the quality, namely the RBEμ value, of the radiation field in different conditions. The measured RBEμ values are only partially consistent with the RBE values of other BNCT facilities

MICRODOSIMETRIC STUDY AT THE CNAO ACTIVE-SCANNING CARBON-ION BEAM

The Italian National Centre for Oncological Hadrontherapy (CNAO) has been treating patients since 2011 with carbon-ion beams using the active-scanning modality. In such irradiation modality, the beam spot, which scans the treatment area, is characterised by very high particle-fluence rates (more than 105 s-1 mm-2). Moreover, the Bragg-peak is only ~1 mm-FWHM. Commercial tissue-equivalent proportional counters (TEPC), like the Far West Technologies LET-\ubd, are large, hence they have limited capability to measure at high counting fluence rates. In this study we have used two home-made detectors, a mini-TEPC 0.81 mm2 in sensitive area and a silicon telescope 0.125 mm2 in sensitive area, to perform microdosimetric measurements in the therapeutic carbon-ion beam of CNAO. A monoenergetic carbon-ion beam of 189.5 \ub1 0.3 MeV/u scanning a 3 7 3 cm2 area has been used. Spectral differences are visible in the low y-value region, but the mean microdosimetric values, measured with the two detectors, result to be pretty consistent, as well as the microdosimetric spectra in the high y-value region