Since the Internet of Things (IoT) enabled medical diagnostic system requires unprecedented precision and automation for better health care delivery, therefore in such systems, the performance of antennas for efficiently transferring data (vital functions of the human body) is an important task. To address these concerns, a mechanically robust, novel hybrid wearable on-body antenna inspired by Moore's fractalbased geometry and conventional rectangular loop for a diagnostic health monitoring system is proposed. The structure developed involves the etching of Moore's curve onto a conventional rectangular patch and subsequently encasing it in a rectangular loop along with a defected ground structure. The proposed antenna exhibits dual-band with bandwidth ranging from 1.38 -1.8 GHz and 2.25 -4.88 GHz respectively, covering WMTS, ISM, and Personal Communication band besides covering a portion of UWB band also. The two operating bands of the antenna are wideband with fractional bandwidth of 38.5% and 73% respectively. It is observed that the average specific absorption rate (SAR) over the multi-layer phantom is 0.025 W/kg for an input power of ≈ 24 dBm. In comparison to the recently reported wearable antennas, the design proposed has a compact footprint of 0.135 λo x 0.093λo x 0.004λo besides offering a dual-band of operation, peak gain of 2.2 dBi, overall radiated efficiency of 95% and SAR below 0.025 W/kg. The design is fabricated using Rogers 5880 substrate (semi-flex) of thickness 0.75 mm. The experimental results validate the simulated results making the proposed antenna a promising candidate for the bio-medical application. On analysing the performance of the proposed antenna onto the human body (human body loading), it is concluded that the proposed antenna structure is appropriate for bio-telemetric application in diagnostic health monitoring systems wherein data is relayed from all bio-sensors to remote control systems.
Background: Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) has been effective in various psychiatric disorders and is life-saving in some conditions. Despite its effectiveness and lack of serious side-effects, its use is restricted due to negative attitude of patients and their relatives towards ECT. The objective of the study was to study the attitude of patients and their attendants towards ECT. Also, we studied their knowledge regarding ECT prior to the administration of ECT.Methods: A 16 item questionnaire was formulated to be used for assessing the attitude and knowledge about ECT and was administered after translating it into Urdu language for better understanding. Patients planned for ECT were administered the questionnaire after taking consent. A total of 60 patients and 60 attendants were taken up for the study.Results: About 60-70% of patients gave correct (right) responses to questions like ECT being life-saving procedure, need of investigations before ECT and other questions like question numbers 1,5,6,7,11,14,15. There was little knowledge regarding other areas like use of ECT in pregnant females and elderly (question numbers 2, 4, 10, 12). The patients as well as their attendants did not differ significantly in the responses given to the queries. Maximum number of patients received knowledge regarding ECT from doctors; few had attained it from other sources like internet.Conclusions: The study is a preliminary one and emphasizes the need for better standardized questionnaire for proper assessment. It also gives us an insight into lack of knowledge among patients and their attendants regarding ECT.
Background & Objectives: Various pathophysiological mechanisms and risk factors have been identified in patients with restless leg syndrome and there exist other factors also that are yet to be identified and are under-researched. Evidence suggests a possible link between Vitamin D deficiency and Restless leg syndrome.The aim was to study the Vitamin D levels in patients diagnosed with RLS and to find a correlation between Vitamin D and RLS. Methods: This was a case-control study carried out in the outpatient department of the Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences Kashmir.A total of 144 subjects were enrolled in the study. Fifty-one were diagnosed cases of RLS and 93 were healthy controls.The Vitamin D levels were analysed by the chemiluminescent immunoassay method in both cases as well as controls.The descriptive statistics were used for various socio-demographic and clinical variables.The data were analysed by chi-square test, t-test and multivariate logistic regression analysis. Results: The vitamin D levels were significantly low in the RLS group in comparison to the control group. There was a significant correlation between vitamin D levels, vitamin D deficiency and restless leg syndrome (OR= 1.01, p-value 0.005 and OR= 5.40, p-value <0.0001 respectively). Interpretation &conclusions: Vitamin D levels were low in patients with RLS. This signifies vitamin D may have some role in the pathophysiology of RLS.Vitamin D regulates the nervous system development and function therefore, its use can be considered in the management of RLS when other modalities cannot prove as a promising agent.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis that imposed significant risk to the mental health of people. The vulnerable populations like healthcare workers, frontline workers, children, elderly, and pregnant females were at a greater risk of developing mental health problems. The administration of early counselling before overt signs of mental disorders will help in preventing morbidity and provide better opportunities to work in a crisis situation. Teleconsultation is a helping hand when visiting in person can prove dangerous. Digital networking systems proved a tremendous help during restrictions implemented to curtail the spread of infection.
Background The present study was aimed to know the knowledge and attitude of patients towards mandatory pre-ECT
Rapid Antigen Detection Test during COVID-19 Pandemic. A 18 item questionnaire Method was formulated to asses the
knowledge and attitude of patients towards rapid antigen testing in patients who were planned for electroconvulsive therapy. A total of 100 patients
were taken for study. Our study showed that majority of our patients had knowledge about Results RAT (61%), its advantages (66%) and why the
test was done and were of the opinion that it will help us to stop the spread of infection. However, 82% of the patients gave the positive responses
that they fear the test results and around 5% of them were of the opinion that they would prefer cancellation of ECT than to undergo testing.
Majority (93%) of our cases gave the positive response on that they were anxious about redoing the test. From our study we concluded Conclusion
that though most of them had good knowledge about the test but most of them had negative attitude towards the test.
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