Background:Oral cancer remains the commonest form of cancer and cancer-related deaths among Indian males due to popularity of avoidable risk factors such as tobacco and alcohol use. A workplace oral cancer screening and tobacco cessation study was commenced on World No Tobacco Day 2007 at a chemical industry in rural Maharashtra.Aims:The objectives were to screen the employees for oral neoplasia and to correlate it with their tobacco consumption pattern. In addition, the objective was to provide tobacco cessation services at the workplace.Materials and Methods:This is an interventional cohort study among 104 employees of a chemical industrial unit in rural Maharashtra. Naked eye examination of the oral cavity was performed for all employees by a doctor irrespective of the tobacco habits at the beginning and at the end of 1 year. In between, the tobacco users were regularly examined during each follow-up.Statistical analysis used:Through personal interviews of the participants, data were manually recorded and were transferred to electronic data base. Data analysis was conducted in STATA™ 8.2 on intention to treat basis.Results and Conclusions:Among the 104 employees, 50 (48.08%) were current tobacco users at the beginning of the program. Oral precancers were seen exclusively among 20 (40%) tobacco users. After 1 year of workplace tobacco cessation intervention, 80% of oral precancers regressed. This shows that screening of the oral cavity at the workplace is effective when combined with tobacco cessation.
An attempt has been made to formulate and apply an overhaul and replacement decision model in the context of maintenance of capital equipment in a government utility (power generation) plant. The method of solution used is a recursive one, where the problem involves repetitive decisions over a long period which falls within the dynamic programming area. It is a long‐term sequential discrete optimisation formulation where “minimise total cost” is the criterion for optimisation. Overhaul is considered to be a restorative maintenance action which is taken to improve the condition of the equipment. Maintenance, in the form of overhaul or repair, does not return the equipment to the new condition, as achieved by replacement. The results have been compared with the existing system. The comparison provided at the end of the article brings out the gap between the existing and the proposed practice.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.