BACKGROUND Few studies have focused on syndromic data to determine levels of alarm thresholds to detection of meningitis outbreaks. The purpose of this study was to determine threshold levels of meningitis outbreak in Hamadan Province, west of Iran. METHODS Data on both confirmed and suspected cases of meningitis (fever and neurological symptom) form 21 March 2010 to 20 March 2012 were used i...

Abstract Background Beta-thalassemia is a common hereditary hemoglobinopathy, which is a reason of microcytic hypochromic anemia. Patients with major thalassemia require multiple blood transfusions. This study evaluated growth in thalassemic patient and relationship with ferritin level. Materials and Methods This is a cross sectional study on seventy patients (36 boys, 34girls) with transfu...

PURPOSE To prospectively investigate the effects of radiation dose and section thickness on quantitative multidetector computed tomographic (CT) indexes of pulmonary emphysema. MATERIALS AND METHODS The institutional review board approved this protocol. Written informed consent was obtained from all patients. Seventy patients (49 men, 21 women; age range, 38-79 years) referred for surgical re...

BACKGROUND Waist circumference has been identified as a valuable predictor of cardiovascular risk in children. The development of waist circumference percentiles and cut-offs for various ethnic groups are necessary because of differences in body composition. The purpose of this study was to develop waist circumference percentiles for Chinese children and to explore optimal waist circumference c...

PURPOSE To prospectively compare pulmonary function tests and helical computed tomographic (CT) indexes for quantifying pulmonary emphysema with macroscopic and microscopic morphometry. MATERIALS AND METHODS The investigation was approved by the local ethics committee, and written informed consent was obtained from patients. Multi-detector row CT of the thorax was performed with simultaneous ...

BACKGROUND The introduction of modern troponin assays has facilitated diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction due to improved sensitivity with corresponding loss of specificity. Atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with elevated levels of troponin. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of troponin I in patients with suspected acute coronary syndrome and chro...

A freshwater Se guideline was developed for consideration based on concentrations in fish eggs or ovaries, with a focus on Canadian species, following the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment protocol for developing guideline values. When sufficient toxicity data are available, the protocol recommends deriving guidelines as the 5th percentile of the species sensitivity distribution ...

BACKGROUND Performance indicators in the long term care sector are important to evaluate the efficiency and quality of care delivery. We are, however, still far from being able to refer to a common set of indicators at the European level.We therefore demonstrate the calculation of Long Term Care Facility Quality Indicators (LTCFQIs) from data of the European Services and Health for Elderly in L...

The aim of this paper is to project extreme precipitation events in an arid and a semiarid station. In order to project climate change based on general circulation models (GCMs), we have applied LARS-WG[1] downscaling tool. This stochastic weather generator down-scaled the climate of two synoptic stations using HADCM3 model and A2 emission scenario for 2040. We extracted extreme precipitation e...

background this study aim to determine the association between height and cancer in the children aged 14 years at the time of diagnosis in rasht, iran. materials and methods in this cross-sectional study, height of patients with a malignancy (≤14) at the time of diagnosis measured in the standard charts of united states national center for the health statistics (nchs). data were reported by des...