The integration of Islamic values in daily clinical practice among healthcare professionals: a scoping review

Islam is a major world religion that has a universal system encompassing every aspect of daily human activities. In this regard, Islam also provides principles and values related to the practice of medicine. However, it is not known how much of the practices have been practiced in daily clinical settings. Therefore, this paper aims to chart the overview of the studies and publications that have been done related to the integration of Islamic principles and values being incorporated in clinical practice. This paper is a scoping review. Databases like PubMed, PLOS, BMJ, Cochrane, EBSCo, Emerald, ProQuest, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and ACI were used to conduct the literature search. MeSH terms like “Islam," “religion and medicine,” and “attitude of medical staff” are among the keywords used, along with synonyms like “Islam," “Islamic," “Muslim," “medicine," “clinical," “practise," “healthcare," “professionals," “Islamic medical practise," “doctor," “nurse,” and “healthcare professionals.” The Boolean operators “AND” and “OR” were applied during the search. In addition to databases, manual internet searches were conducted to find relevant papers. The review has found that Islamic concepts and ideals have been sporadically incorporated into medical practice worldwide, whether by Muslim or non-Muslim healthcare professionals. The three key themes related to Islamic practice in medicine: are (a) attitude and character of healthcare professionals, (b) clinical decisionmaking, and (c) holistic spiritual care. There is still a big gap and differences in integrating Islamic values into clinical practice. Further work on defining and constructing a framework for a holistic Islamic medical practice is warranted

Association of Socio-Demographic and Clinicopathological Risk Factors with Oral Cancers: A 19-Year Retrospective Study

Objective: To determine the association of socio-demographic and clinic-pathological risk factors with oral cancer in Kelantan, Malaysia. Material and Methods: A 19-year cross-sectional survey was performed in Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (HUSM), Malaysia. Medical record of 301 oral cancer patients was retrieved from the Medical Records office. Results: The majority of the oral cancer cases were male (62.8%), non-smokers (57.5%), non-alcohol consumers (83.4%), non-betel quid chewers (96.7%), and belonged to Malay ethnicity (68.8%). At the time of diagnosis, most of the patients were at stage II (38.9%). Approximately one-third (30.6%) of the total OC patients experienced loco-regional/distant metastasis, whereas no metastasis was detected in around two-thirds of cases (69.4%). A combination of surgery and radiotherapy was the most commonly employed treatment modality (27.2%). At the time of this study, the survival status of most of the patients was alive (69.1%). The most frequently encountered oral cancer in the Kelantanese population was oral squamous cell carcinoma (70.1%), with the tongue being the most frequently involved oral cavity site (35.5%). Conclusion: More than three-fourths of the cases were alive at follow-up, which included the cases that did not undergo any form of treatment

Association of Socio-Demographic and Clinicopathological Risk Factors with Oral Cancers: A 19-Year Retrospective Study

Objective: To determine the association of socio-demographic and clinic-pathological risk factors with oral cancer in Kelantan, Malaysia. Material and Methods: A 19-year cross-sectional survey was performed in Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (HUSM), Malaysia. Medical record of 301 oral cancer patients was retrieved from the Medical Records office. Results: The majority of the oral cancer cases were male (62.8%), non-smokers (57.5%), non-alcohol consumers (83.4%), non-betel quid chewers (96.7%), and belonged to Malay ethnicity (68.8%). At the time of diagnosis, most of the patients were at stage II (38.9%). Approximately one-third (30.6%) of the total OC patients experienced loco-regional/distant metastasis, whereas no metastasis was detected in around two-thirds of cases (69.4%). A combination of surgery and radiotherapy was the most commonly employed treatment modality (27.2%). At the time of this study, the survival status of most of the patients was alive (69.1%). The most frequently encountered oral cancer in the Kelantanese population was oral squamous cell carcinoma (70.1%), with the tongue being the most frequently involved oral cavity site (35.5%). Conclusion: More than three-fourths of the cases were alive at follow-up, which included the cases that did not undergo any form of treatment

Global injury morbidity and mortality from 1990 to 2017 : results from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

Correction:Background Past research in population health trends has shown that injuries form a substantial burden of population health loss. Regular updates to injury burden assessments are critical. We report Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2017 Study estimates on morbidity and mortality for all injuries. Methods We reviewed results for injuries from the GBD 2017 study. GBD 2017 measured injury-specific mortality and years of life lost (YLLs) using the Cause of Death Ensemble model. To measure non-fatal injuries, GBD 2017 modelled injury-specific incidence and converted this to prevalence and years lived with disability (YLDs). YLLs and YLDs were summed to calculate disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Findings In 1990, there were 4 260 493 (4 085 700 to 4 396 138) injury deaths, which increased to 4 484 722 (4 332 010 to 4 585 554) deaths in 2017, while age-standardised mortality decreased from 1079 (1073 to 1086) to 738 (730 to 745) per 100 000. In 1990, there were 354 064 302 (95% uncertainty interval: 338 174 876 to 371 610 802) new cases of injury globally, which increased to 520 710 288 (493 430 247 to 547 988 635) new cases in 2017. During this time, age-standardised incidence decreased non-significantly from 6824 (6534 to 7147) to 6763 (6412 to 7118) per 100 000. Between 1990 and 2017, age-standardised DALYs decreased from 4947 (4655 to 5233) per 100 000 to 3267 (3058 to 3505). Interpretation Injuries are an important cause of health loss globally, though mortality has declined between 1990 and 2017. Future research in injury burden should focus on prevention in high-burden populations, improving data collection and ensuring access to medical care.Peer reviewe

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Toward Realigning Automatic Speaker Verification in the Era of COVID-19

The use of face masks has increased dramatically since the COVID-19 pandemic started in order to to curb the spread of the disease. Additionally, breakthrough infections caused by the Delta and Omicron variants have further increased the importance of wearing a face mask, even for vaccinated individuals. However, the use of face masks also induces attenuation in speech signals, and this change may impact speech processing technologies, e.g., automated speaker verification (ASV) and speech to text conversion. In this paper we examine Automatic Speaker Verification (ASV) systems against the speech samples in the presence of three different types of face mask: surgical, cloth, and filtered N95, and analyze the impact on acoustics and other factors. In addition, we explore the effect of different microphones, and distance from the microphone, and the impact of face masks when speakers use ASV systems in real-world scenarios. Our analysis shows a significant deterioration in performance when an ASV system encounters different face masks, microphones, and variable distance between the subject and microphone. To address this problem, this paper proposes a novel framework to overcome performance degradation in these scenarios by realigning the ASV system. The novelty of the proposed ASV framework is as follows: first, we propose a fused feature descriptor by concatenating the novel Ternary Deviated overlapping Patterns (TDoP), Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), and Gammatone Cepstral Coefficients (GTCC), which are used by both the ensemble learning-based ASV and anomaly detection system in the proposed ASV architecture. Second, this paper proposes an anomaly detection model for identifying vocal samples produced in the presence of face masks. Next, it presents a Peak Norm (PN) filter to approximate the signal of the speaker without a face mask in order to boost the accuracy of ASV systems. Finally, the features of filtered samples utilizing the PN filter and samples without face masks are passed to the proposed ASV to test for improved accuracy. The proposed ASV system achieved an accuracy of 0.99 and 0.92, respectively, on samples recorded without a face mask and with different face masks. Although the use of face masks affects the ASV system, the PN filtering solution overcomes this deficiency up to 4%. Similarly, when exposed to different microphones and distances, the PN approach enhanced system accuracy by up to 7% and 9%, respectively. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented framework against an in-house prepared, diverse Multi Speaker Face Masks (MSFM) dataset, (IRB No. FY2021-83), consisting of samples of subjects taken with a variety of face masks and microphones, and from different distances

Heterogeneous Catalyzed Biodiesel Production Using Cosolvent: A Mini Review

Biodiesel is gaining recognition as a good replacement for typical diesel owing to its renewability, sustainability, and eco-friendly nature. Transesterification is the leading route for biodiesel generation, which occurs during homogeneous/heterogeneous/enzymatic catalysis. Besides this, the usage of heterogeneous catalysts is considered more advantageous over homogeneous catalysts due to the easy catalyst recovery. Consequently, numerous heterogeneous catalysts have been synthesized from multiple sources with the intention of making the manufacturing process more efficient and cost-effective. Alongside this, numerous researchers have attempted to improve the biodiesel yield using heterogeneous catalysts by introducing cosolvents, such that phase limitation between oil and alcohol can be minimized. This short review is aimed at examining the investigations performed to date on heterogeneously catalyzed biodiesel generation in the presence of different cosolvents. It encompasses the techniques for heterogeneous catalyst synthesis, reported in the literature available for heterogeneous catalyzed biodiesel generation using cosolvents and their effects. It also suggests that the application of cosolvent in heterogeneously catalyzed three-phase systems substantially reduces the mass transfer limitation between alcohol and oil phases, which leads to enhancements in biodiesel yield along with reductions in values of optimized parameters, with catalyst weight ranges from 1 to 15 wt. %, and alcohol/oil ratio ranges from 5.5 to 20. The reaction time for getting the maximum conversion ranges from 10 to 600 min in the presence of different cosolvents. Alongside this, most of the time, the biodiesel yield remained above 90% in the presence of cosolvents

Effect of phase noise on the optical millimeter-wave signal in the DWDM-RoF system

In this study, we examined the effect of phase noise on the optical millimeter-wave (mm-wave) signal in a dense wavelength division multiplexing radio-over-fiber (DWDM-RoF) system. A single modulator was used to generate the optical mm-wave signal in the DWDM-RoF system. This paper addresses the impact of phase noise, which results from phase imbalance, on the optical mm-wave signal. To lower the effect of phase noise on the optical mm-wave signal, the phase imbalance should be controlled. The phase imbalance can be controlled and decreased by adjusting the phase at the phase shift (PS). The system performance was analyzed using various parameters such as bit error rate (BER), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR), and error vector magnitude (EVM). From the results, we found the phase imbalance affected the optical mm-wave signal due to the imbalanced splitting of the signal intensity at the MZM. The phase imbalance impacts the phase noise, which impacts the optical mm-wave signal. The phase noise could be decreased by controlling the phase imbalance at the phase of 5π/12. The best results at the phase of 5π/12 were collected for phase noise at 0.02 degrees

The effects of long-term diabetes on the haematological and uterine indicators and their association with neonatal nephrogenesis counter-protected by camel milk: A time dependent study

The novelty of this project is to describe how chronic diabetes altered the haematological and uterine indicators in a time dependent-manner that were reversed by camel milk (CM) therapy in pregnant and nonpregnant rat models. Fifty-four female rats were divided into three groups: Placebo (N), diabetic control (DC) and diabetic treated (DT) with CM at 40 ml/kg/24 h for 90 days. A single intact male was introduced into every group for mating at day 60 of the experiment. The sample collection was undertaken at day 30 and 60 of the nonpregnant rats and at day 90 immediately after parturition for the pregnant rats. At every collection, the dam’s blood, as well as the uteri and neonatal kidneys were collected and subjected to a paraffin tissue preparation technique for a histological evaluation. The data revealed that at day 30, the uterine endo- and myometrium remained unaffected by diabetes, but at day 60, a significant reduction in the uterine indicators from diabetes was observed. However, the CM restored the uterine histology in the DT. At 90 day, chronic diabetes showed (P < 0.05) a harmful effect on the pregnant uterus which was reversed (P < 0.05) by the CM. The RBC (red blood cell) indices, platelets, and leucocyte counts were severely affected by the diabetes and protected by the CM at every point of collection. The kidney tissues of the neonate rats, delivered by the dams, in the DC presented a significant (P < 0.05) shrinkage in the cortex and glomeruli while the CM potentially reversed these changes. These results will help to understand the chronic diabetes effects on the uterus and neonate’s renal genesis, and the role of camel milk in the management of chronic pre-gestational diabete