Effectiveness of Light Pressure Stroking Massage Therapy on Patients' Satisfaction and Quality of Pain Control after Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery

Introduction & Objective: Pain on mid-sternotomy incision site after Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery (CABG) is a common problem has a negative effect on quality of life and follow-up treatment. Thus the present study aimed to determine the effect of light massage therapy by patient's Light Pressure Stroking Massage Therapy on Patients' Satisfaction and Quality of Pain Control in post-CABG patients. Materials & Methods: In this semi - experimental study, 72 post-CABG patients were randomly divided into an intervention and a control group. The intervention group received Light Pressure Stroking massage by the nurse for 20 minutes in 4 sessions. The control group received routine care. Patient’s satisfaction and quality of pain control were assessed by brief pain inventory (BPI) and Idvall quality of life questionnaire before and after the intervention. Then, the data was analyzed by student t-test, paired t-test and chi-square by SPSS software version 18. Results: Mean (SD) scores for Satisfaction and Quality of Pain Control before the intervention in the case group were 5.402±1.601 and 49.324±2.569 and in the control group were 4.452±2.123 and 48.425± 2.505 respectively, that did not show a significant difference (P > 0.05). After the intervention, Mean (SD) scores for Satisfaction and Quality of Pain Control in the case group, were 8.402±1.200 and 64.612± 2.004 and in the control group were 5.321±1.500 and 51.513±2.234 respectively, that showed a significant difference (P < 0.001). Conclusions: Regarding the finding of study, use of Light Pressure Stroking massage therapy can increase Patients' Satisfaction and Quality of Pain Control of patients after coronary artery bypass surgery and due to low cost and simplicity of this method, it can perhaps be used as a complement to drug therapy and postoperative interventions used in these patients. Effectiveness of Light Pressure Stroking Massage Therapy on Patients' Satisfaction and Quality of Pain Control after Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316853340_Effectiveness_of_Light_Pressure_Stroking_Massage_Therapy_on_Patients'_Satisfaction_and_Quality_of_Pain_Control_after_Coronary_Artery_Bypass_Graft_Surgery [accessed Nov 01 2017]

The most important causes of non-adherence in patients on dialysis

Renal failure is commonly and chronic disease. Dialysis is routine treatment for these patients. Adherence to treatment status is one of the problems of patient on dialysis. The aim at this study is determining of most important causes of non-adherence in patients on dialysis according to previous studies in Iran.At first all of the studies related to our title by using some keywords(dialysis, hemodialysis, adherence, and non-adherence) searched for Iranian databases; iranmedex, magiran, SID, Iran doc, google, google scholar. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were: 1. Publish articles related to adherence or non-adherence in Iran. 2. Articles were Persian (published in Iran). 3. Types of articles were original. 4. All the articles were free full text and downloadable. As a result, related to inclusion and exclusion criteria 13 articles were found and analysises. The most important reasons for non-adherence to treatment were: psychological reasons (often depression), Lack of awareness and attitude of dialysis patients and lack of social support. Treatment for adherence is so important and can very significant role in health improvement in patients on dialysis

Dodecatungstocobaltate and Sn (IV)-Substituted Polyoxometalate: Preparation, Characterization and Catalytic Performances in Solventless Synthesis of Bis(indolyl)methanes

Electrophilic substitution reaction of indole with various aldehydes and cyclohexanone were carried out in the presence of electron-transfer (K5CoW12O40.3H2O) and green Lewis acid ([(n-C4H9)4N]3 PMo2W9(Sn4+.H2O)O39) catalysts. These catalysts were characterized by N2-adsorption measurements, FT-IR, UV-Vis, 31P NMR, TGA, cyclic voltammetry and elemental analysis. Mechanisms for their catalytic activity are proposed. Both of these catalysts can be recovered and reused.Keywords: Dodecatungstocobaltate, Sn (IV)-substituted polyoxometalate, bis(indolyl)methanes, electrophilic substitution, solvent-freecondition

Evaluating the effect of a herb on the control of blood glucose and insulin-resistance in patients with advanced type 2 diabetes (a double-blind clinical trial)

Background: Different benefits of various herbal medicines in decreasing blood sugar have been reported in different clinical trials so far. Considering the growing tendency toward these combinations and the booming market, inappropriate advice is growing accordingly. Hence, it is necessary to evaluate the effects and possible complications of such combinations on health status and blood glucose control. Methods: Two 38-subject groups were formed and a 12-week treatment program was administered for both groups. The inclusion criteria were failure to control blood glucose with two oral medicines, unwillingness to inject insulin. The medicine was prepared in capsules by Booali Company. Each capsule weighed 750 mg and contained nettle leaf 20 (w/w), berry leaf 10 (w/w), onion and garlic 20 (w/w), fenugreek seed 20 (w/w), walnut leaf 20 (w/w), and cinnamon bark 10 (w/w) all in powder. Results: At the beginning of the study, there was no significant difference between the subjects regarding the evaluated parameters, but after the intervention, the level of glucose was significantly lower in fasting (P=0.0001) and 2-hour postprandial (P=0.002) levels. The level of glycated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) (P=0.0001) also decreased from 0.33±9.72 to 0.20±8.39 . Finally, the level of insulin resistance reduced from 1.9±4.1 to 1.4±2.6 (P=0.001) after consuming herbal medicine. Conclusion: According to the results of the current study, the herbal combination was effective in controlling blood sugar, and considering the reduction of HbA1c by 1.31 , it seems that the herbal combination is an effective medicine to treat diabetes. © 2020 Babol University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved

Optimal Sensorless Four Switch Direct Power Control of BLDC Motor

Brushless DC (BLDC) motors are used in a wide range of applications due to their high efficiency and high power density. In this paper, sensorless four-switch direct power control (DPC) method with the sector to sector commutations ripple minimization for BLDC motor control is proposed. The main features of the proposed DPC method are: (1) fast dynamic response (2) easy implementation (3) use of power feedback for motor control that is much easy to implement (4) eliminating the torque dips during sector-to sector commutations. For controlling the motor speed, a position sensorless method is used enhancing drive reliability. For reference speed tracking, a PI control is also designed and tuned based on imperialist competition algorithm (ICA) that reduces reference tracking error. The feasibility of the proposed control method is developed and analyzed by MATLAB/SIMULINK®. Simulation results prove high performance exhibited by the proposed DPC strategy

Model-Free Predictive Current Control of a Voltage Source Inverter

Indexación: Scopus.Conventional model predictive control (MPC) of power converter has been widely applied to power inverters achieving high performance, fast dynamic response, and accurate transient control of power converter. However, the MPC strategy is highly reliant on the accuracy of the inverter model used for the controlled system. Consequently, a parameter or model mismatch between the plant and the controller leads to a sub-optimal performance of MPC. In this paper, a new strategy called model-free predictive control (MF-PC) is proposed to improve such problems. The presented approach is based on a recursive least squares algorithm to identify the parameters of an auto-regressive with exogenous input (ARX) model. The proposed method provides an accurate prediction of the controlled variables without requiring detailed knowledge of the physical system. This new approach and is realized by employing a novel state space identification algorithm into the predictive control structure. The performance of the proposed model-free predictive control method is compared with conventional MPC. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed method is totally robust against parameters and model changes compared with the conventional model based solutions.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/926284

The effects of vitamin D supplementation on interictal serum levels of calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) in episodic migraine patients: Post hoc analysis of a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial

Background: Emerging evidence showed promising effects of vitamin D on headaches characteristics. Thus, it seems there is still a need for more researches to clarify the mechanisms by which this vitamin exerts anti-migraine effects. Methods: The present study was conducted as a 16-week randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial on 80 episodic migraine patients allocated in 2 parallel groups each consisted of 40 patients who received vitamin D 2000 IU/d or placebo. At baseline and after the intervention completion, headache diaries and migraine disability assessment questionnaire (MIDAS) were used to assess migraine related variables in patients. Also, interictal serum concentration of calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) (as the dominant mediator of migraine pain pathogenesis) was evaluated using ELISA method. Results: The mean (SD) of age in the vitamin D and placebo groups was 37 (8) and 38 (12) years, respectively. ANCOVA test adjusted for baseline values, and confounders showed vitamin D supplementation resulted in a significant improvement in MIDAS score after 12 weeks in the intervention group (21.49 (16.22-26.77)) compared to placebo (31.16 (25.51-36.82) P value: 0.016). Moreover, after controlling for baseline levels, and other variables using ANCOVA, CGRP level was appeared to be significantly lower following vitamin D supplementation (153.26 (133.03-173.49) ng/L) than the patients in the placebo arm (188.35 (167.15-209.54) ng/L) (P value = 0.022). Conclusion: According to the current findings, vitamin D supplementation in episodic migraineurs, particularly in those with migraine with aura, may potentially improve migraine headache characteristics and disability probably through attenuating CGRP levels. Therefore, these results could provide a new insight into anti-nociceptive effects of vitamin D; however, more studies are required to confirm our findings. Trial registration: The trial is registered in the Iranian registry of clinical trials (IRCT) at 11 July 2018, with IRCT code: IRCT20151128025267N6. © 2020 The Author(s)

Application of Linear Discriminant Analysis in Dimensionality Reduction for Hand Motion Classification

The classification of upper-limb movements based on surface electromyography (EMG) signals is an important issue in the control of assistive devices and rehabilitation systems. Increasing the number of EMG channels and features in order to increase the number of control commands can yield a high dimensional feature vector. To cope with the accuracy and computation problems associated with high dimensionality, it is commonplace to apply a processing step that transforms the data to a space of significantly lower dimensions with only a limited loss of useful information. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) has been successfully applied as an EMG feature projection method. Recently, a number of extended LDA-based algorithms have been proposed, which are more competitive in terms of both classification accuracy and computational costs/times with classical LDA. This paper presents the findings of a comparative study of classical LDA and five extended LDA methods. From a quantitative comparison based on seven multi-feature sets, three extended LDA-based algorithms, consisting of uncorrelated LDA, orthogonal LDA and orthogonal fuzzy neighborhood discriminant analysis, produce better class separability when compared with a baseline system (without feature projection), principle component analysis (PCA), and classical LDA. Based on a 7-dimension time domain and time-scale feature vectors, these methods achieved respectively 95.2% and 93.2% classification accuracy by using a linear discriminant classifier

The effect of graphene oxide (GO) nanoparticles on the processing of epoxy/glass fiber composites using resin infusion

In this paper, the effects of graphene oxide (GO) nanoparticles on glass fiber composite processing by incorporating them into epoxy resin were investigated. GO was synthesized from graphite powder and was mixed with epoxy resin. Three different GO contents of 0.05, 0.1, and 0.2 wt% were used. Epoxy/GO samples were tested for rheology and cure kinetics to evaluate the effects of GO content on important resin infusion processing parameters. The results show that adding GO to neat epoxy resin increased the viscosity and affected the resin cure reaction by reducing the resin gel time. After that, glass fiber composites were prepared using the resin infusion process. Samples with 0.2 wt% GO result in very slow resin infiltration time with premature resin gelation. A 30 % increase in flexural strength and a 21 % increase in flexural modulus are manifested by adding GO as the secondary reinforcement to glass fiber composites

Compression Behavior of Single-layer Graphene

Central to most applications involving monolayer graphene is its mechanical response under various stress states. To date most of the work reported is of theoretical nature and refers to tension and compression loading of model graphene. Most of the experimental work is indeed limited to bending of single flakes in air and the stretching of flakes up to typically ~1% using plastic substrates. Recently we have shown that by employing a cantilever beam we can subject single graphene into various degrees of axial compression. Here we extend this work much further by measuring in detail both stress uptake and compression buckling strain in single flakes of different geometries. In all cases the mechanical response is monitored by simultaneous Raman measurements through the shift of either the G or 2D phonons of graphene. In spite of the infinitely small thickness of the monolayers, the results show that graphene embedded in plastic beams exhibit remarkable compression buckling strains. For large length (l)-to-width (w) ratios (> 0.2) the buckling strain is of the order of -0.5% to -0.6%. However, for l/w <0.2 no failure is observed for strains even higher than -1%. Calculations based on classical Euler analysis show that the buckling strain enhancement provided by the polymer lateral support is more than six orders of magnitude compared to suspended graphene in air