Vascular Lesions Seen among Patients Treated at Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Background: Birthmarks sometimes represent significant vascular anomalies that require diagnosis and treatment. This study was aimed at determining the demographic and clinical pattern of vascular lesions seen among patients attending The Oral and Maxillofacial Surgical Clinic at Muhimbili National Hospital. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was done at Muhimbili National Hospital between 2008 and 2011. The study population consisted of patients attending the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgical unit with histologically/cytologically confirmed vascular lesions. Clinical and demographic data of these patients were recorded and analyzed. Results: Study consisted of 33 patients. The male to female sex ratio was 1: 1.1. The ages ranged from 1 month to 56 years with a mean of 9.4 years. The age group 0-9 years was the most commonly affected. Haemangioma was the commonest vascular lesion found in 19(57.6%) followed by lymphangioma in 12(36.4%). Cystic hygroma and syndromic vascular lesions were found less frequently. Females were slightly more affected with haemangioma compared to males while lymphangioma affected both sexes equally. Most haemangiomas 14(73.7%) presented after birth while most lymphangiomas 9(75%) presented at birth. The cheek and upper lip were the commonest sites affected in 11(33.3%) and 10(30.3%) respectively. The commonest location for haemangiomas were the cheek 7(21.2) and upper lip 5(15.2%). Lymphangiomas were commonly located on the upper lip 5(15.2%) followed by the cheek 4(12.1%). Conclusion: The Findings in our review concurred with previous studies on vascular lesions but differed on fact that haemangiomas were the commonest vascular lesion in the head and neck area instead of lymphangioma. This calls for a large multicentre study to confirm this finding

Magnitude and Determinants of Dental Anxiety among Adult Patients Attending Public Dental Clinics in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania

Introduction. It is estimated that, about 40% of the population suffer from dental anxiety. Dental anxiety is considered to be complex and multifactorial with a wide range of provoking factors which may be patient, provider, or environment-related. Aim. This study aimed to assess the magnitude and determinants of dental anxiety among adult patients attending public dental clinics in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Methodology. This was a descriptive cross-sectional study carried out in 4 public hospitals in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It included 300 adult patients who had dental caries, periodontal diseases, or dental trauma. Data were collected using a self-administered Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS) questionnaire. Data were analyzed using the SPSS computer software version 23. A one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to assess the association between variables, and the significance level was set at p<0.05. Results. The mean age of participants was 32.18 years (±11.06 SD) with a male-to-female ratio of 1 : 1.43. The means MDAS score was 12.84 ± 4.99. Tooth extraction had the highest mean MDAS score. The majority (261, 87%) of participants had mild-to-severe anxiety. The most common (72.2%) anxiety-provoking factor was an unsympathetic dentist; others included unawareness of the procedure to be carried out (58.3%) and the presence of apprehensive patients (52.0%). The level of anxiety was found to be statistically significantly associated (p<0.05) with young age [p=0.009, AOR 3.06 (95% CI, 1.32, 7.09), female patients [p<0.001, AOR 4.45 (95% CI, 2.05, 9.70)], and a higher education level [p<0.05, AOR 2.32 (95% CI, 1.03, 5.25)]. Conclusion. The prevalence of dental anxiety was high among the participants of this study. Female gender, young age, and a higher level of education constituted determinants of dental anxiety. An unsympathetic practitioner, unawareness of the procedure, and presence of apprehensive patients were the common anxiety-provoking factors

Teaching and educational scholarship in Tanzania:Faculty initiative to improve performance of health professions' students

This paper is concerned with the design and implementation of efficient solution algorithms for elliptic PDE problems with correlated random data. The energy orthogonality that is built into stochastic Galerkin approximations is cleverly exploited to give an innovative energy error estimation strategy that utilizes the tensor product structure of the approximation space. An associated error estimator is constructed and shown theoretically and numerically to be an effective mechanism for driving an adaptive refinement process. The codes used in the numerical studies are available online

Teaching and educational scholarship in Tanzania:Faculty initiative to improve performance of health professions' students

Well-educated and competent health professionals influence the health system in which they work to improve health outcomes, through clinical care and community interventions, and by raising standards of practice and supervision. To prepare these individuals, training institutions must ensure that their faculty members, who design and deliver education, are effective teachers. We describe the experience of the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) in encouraging improvements in the teaching capacity of its faculty and postgraduate students triggered by a major institutional transition to competency-based education. We employed a multi-stage process that started by identifying the teaching and learning needs and challenges of MUHAS students and faculty. Collaborating with the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), MUHAS responded to these needs by introducing faculty to competency-based curricula and later to strategies for long term continuing improvement. We demonstrate that teaching faculty members are keen for local institutional support to enable them to enhance their skills as educators, and that they have been able to sustain a program of faculty development for their peers