The COVID-19 outbreak is affecting people worldwide. Many infected patients have respiratory involvement that may progress to acute respiratory distress syndrome. This pilot study aimed to evaluate the clinical efficacy of low-dose whole-lung radiation therapy in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. Methods and Materials: In this clinical trial, conducted in Iran, we enrolled patients with COVID-19 who were older than 60 years and hospitalized to receive supplementary oxygen for their documented pneumonia. Participants were treated with whole-lung irradiation in a single fraction of 0.5 Gy plus the national protocol for the management of COVID-19. Vital signs (including blood oxygenation and body temperature) and laboratory findings (interleukin-6 and C-reactive peptide) were recorded before and after irradiation. Results: Between May 21, 2020 and June 24, 2020, 5 patients received whole-lung irradiation. They were followed for 5 to 7 days to evaluate the response to treatment and toxicities. The clinical and paraclinical findings of 4 of the 5 patients (patient 4 worsened and died on day 3) improved on the first day of irradiation. Patient 3 opted out of the trial on the third day after irradiation. The mean time to discharge was 6 days for the other 3 patients. No acute radiation-induced toxicity was recorded. Conclusions: With a response rate of 80%, whole-lung irradiation in a single fraction of 0.5 Gy had encouraging results in oxygen-dependent patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.
Introduction:To obtain necessary information for managing communicable diseases, different countries have developed national communicable diseases surveillance systems (NCDSS). Exploiting the lesson learned from the leading countries in development of surveillance systems provides the foundation for developing these systems in other countries. In this study, the information and organizational structure of NCDSS in developed countries were reviewed.Methods:The study reviewed publications found on the organizational structure, content and data flow of NCDSS in the United States of America (USA), Australia and Germany that were published in English between 2000 and 2016. The publications were identified by searching the CINAHL, Science Direct, ProQuest, PubMed, Google Scholar databases and the related databases in selected countries.Results:Thirty-four studies were investigated. All of the reviewed countries have implemented the NCDSS. In majority of countries the department of health (DoH) is responsible for managing this system. The reviewed countries have created a minimum data set for reporting communicable diseases data and information.Conclusion:For developing NCDSS, establishing coordinator centers, setting the effective policies and procedures, providing appropriate communication infrastructures for data exchange and defining a communicable diseases minimum data set are essential.
Objectives To determine the rate and nature of complaints and the outcomes of the complaint management at a large heart centre in Tehran. Results A total of 1642 (5.2 per 1000) complaints were received, of which 1457 (4.64 per 1000) were verbal, and 185 (0.56 per 1000) were in written format. 34.7% of the complaints were related to admission procedures, followed by 34.1% communication, 13.8% waiting time, 6.8% delay and 4.1% ignoring the standards of clinical care. Over 90% of complaints were resolved by explanation or verbal apology, 2.1% of them led to a change in the process or procedure, and 4.8% were deemed disapproved claims. Conclusions The majority of patient complaints in Tehran Heart Centre are related to admission procedures or communication; most of them are verbal and resolved in the early stage as an explanation or apology. The hospital complaint management system has the potential to resolve the majority of such complaints in an early stage.
Introduction: talent management is a comprehensive strategy and an approach to international human resource practices and a commitment to widespread sharing of the belief that human resource is a priority and a source of competitive advantage. Talent management ensures the organizations that competent individuals with the right skills have taken the right position. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between talent management and organizational entrepreneurship. Methodology: The present study is an applied one in terms of its nature and purpose, and it is a descriptive and correlational one in terms of the data collection method to test the hypothesis. The population of this study included experts, officials, supervisors and middle and top managers of Golestan province Gas Company who have at least 7 years’ experience. Accordingly, a total number of 51 participated in the study. A questionnaire was used to collect data. Data analysis was carried out through SPSS software for descriptive data and SMART PLS software for inferential data. Results: This study shows that there is a significant positive relationship between talent management and organizational entrepreneurship, and components of each of the main criteria also have a significant relationship with each other. Conclusion: The findings suggest that managers should improve their organization's talent management system in order to increase innovation and competitiveness. These systems can complete and implement various initiatives by creating opportunities to achieve talent resources and providing transparency in selection criteria.
Background: Through the diagnostic decision support systems, potential patients or those who are on the threshold succumbing to a disease can be diagnosed early; thus, the prevention of unnecessary angiography for people not suffering from the coronaryartery disease as well as its dangers and costs can be avoided. The present study aimed at the efficiency evaluation of a multilayer perceptron neural network based on the number of hidden layers and nodes to diagnose coronary heart disease. Methods: A fundamental analysis was conducted on the provided data related to 13,228 patients who had undergone coronary angiography and the database (nine risk factors including age, gender, BMI, body fat, family history, smoking, blood cholesterol, diabetes, and high blood pressure) was investigated in this research using SPSS statistics (17.0) and R (2.13.2) software. In the next stage, through utilizing MATLAB (R2014a), 1332 different MLP neural networks were created. Results: Based on the largest area under the ROC curve, the best model of MLP neural network was selected involving two hidden layers; the first layer had 34 and the second one had 18 hidden nodes. This model had the highest efficiency of 82% in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease. Conclusions:The obtained results demonstrated that the MLP makes an acceptable approach to the diagnosis of coronary artery disease in patients without the need for performing angiography. The development of this model will result in creating an algorithm for decision support systems to diagnose coronary artery disease, as well.
Background and Objectives: Since the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began, several vaccines have been manufactured to subside it. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of side effects after injecting common COVID-19 vaccines available in Iran. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was accomplished on Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (Tehran, Iran) employees during January and September 2022. Eligible participants were selected based on the simple ran- dom method and interviewed about side effects after injecting COVID-19 vaccine. Results: The mean age of 656 participants was 38.03 ± 9.53 years, and 453 (69.1%) were female. The prevalence of post-vac- cination side effects was higher after receiving the first dose (53.2%) than the second (35.9%) and third (49.4%) doses. Across all three vaccine doses, the overall proportion of side effects was higher following AstraZeneca than the others. The most common side effect after the first dose of the vaccine was myalgia (41.9%), followed by fever (36.6%), chills (31.6%), local reactions (27.0%), headache (25.5%), and sweating (21.6%). People experienced mainly myalgia (23.3%) and fever (20.3%) after injecting the second dose of the vaccine. Additionally, the participants had myalgia (37.2%), fever (30.8%), chills (29.2%), local reactions (26.0%), and headache (24.4%) after the third dose of the vaccine. Conclusion: AstraZeneca had a higher proportion of post-vaccination adverse effects than Sputnik V, Pastocovac, and Sin- opharm. The most common side effects were flu-like syndrome and local reactions at the injection site. Furthermore, people rarely experienced life-threatening side effects. Thus, the available COVID-19 vaccines in Iran are safe.
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