Color doppler indices of proximal and distal parts of middle cerebral artery in fetuses with intrauterine growth restriction.

INTRODUCTION Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) is a major clinical issue for pregnant women. The purpose of this study was to evaluate color Doppler indices of the proximal and distal parts of the middle cerebral artery (MCA) of the fetus. METHODS In this cross-sectional study, 350 pregnant patients, with gestation age of 32-40 who were suspected to have intrauterine growth restriction, participated. The patients were referred for color Doppler sonography at the Imam Reza Hospital (Kermanshah, Iran) from May 2011 to September 2012. The following indices were measured for the proximal and distal part of the MCA: pulsatility index (PI), resistive index (RI), fetal heart rate (FHR), systolic to diastolic (S/D) ratio, and peak systolic velocity (PSV). The data were analyzed applying Tukey's-test, Paired-Samples t-test, and simple linear regression analysis using SPSS 19. RESULTS Average age of the mother, the frequency of pregnancy, and fetus gestational age were 27.79±0.17 years, 2.09±1.3, and 34.19±2.52 weeks, respectively. For gestation age of 36 weeks, significant difference was found between the Doppler indices of the proximal parts as well as for the distal parts (p<0.05). CONCLUSION Measurement of fetus MCA indices may depend to the sampling location; however, this needs further investigation in order to find a clear probe location

Parenting Role's Tasks as Parents of Healthy and Disabled Children

Background The purpose of this study was to determine how to do parenting role's tasks as parents of healthy and disabled children younger than 7 years old in Iran (Arak). Materials and Methods In this cross-sectional study, the parenting role tasks questionnaire was completed for 120 parents of healthy children and 120 parents of disabled children with at least one child with disability and the parents were selected by convenience sampling method. T-test, Mann-Whitney test and analysis of variances was used to compare the scores between parents of healthy and disabled children based on studied variables including child age, parent age, child gender, parent education, family economic status, history of trauma and seizure in children was applied to perform the role of parents. Results: There was a significant difference of parent role in both groups of parents. There was observed a significant relationship between role of healthy children's parents and age of child (r=0.21, P=0.016), but not observed in disabled children's parents. In healthy children, there was no significant correlation between parent's role and maternal age. In contrast, in disabled children, there was found a significant difference (P= 0.04) with correlation coefficient of -0.18 representing the inverse relationship. Moreover, no relationship was found between history of seizure and performance of parenting role's tasks in the group of disabled children (P>0.05). Conclusion The performance of tasks of parenting role in two groups of parents of healthy children and disabled ones in four areas of primary care, education, leisure and improving cognitive level had significant difference. This difference in the area of improving the cognitive level was higher. Due to complications of disability, parents of these children pay more attention to other areas of care except of improving cognitive level. Therefore presence of disabled child has negative effect on the balance of the performance of tasks of parenting role in various areas