Background: Nursing interventions tailored to the smoking triggers in patients with non-communicable chronic diseases are essential. However, these interventions are scant due to the nature of factors associated with smoking cessation and the poor understanding of the effect of nurse-led intervention in Iraq.Purpose: This study aimed to determine the dominant smoking triggers and examine the effects of a tailored nursing intervention on smoking behavior in patients with non-communicable chronic diseases.Methods: Convenience samples of 128 patients with non-communicable chronic diseases, male and female patients, who were 18-70 years old, were recruited in this quasi-experimental, randomized comparative trial in the outpatient clinic in one major teaching hospital in Baghdad City, Iraq. The intervention included simple yet specific instructions that were given both orally and in written form to the study samples to enable them to manage their craving to smoke for 6 weeks. The smoking triggers were assessed using Why Do You Smoke questionnaire. Participants were randomly allocated to receive either the nurse-led intervention or standard care. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent sample t-tests, logistic regression, and two-sided tests.Results: Stress reduction was the dominant smoking trigger among subjects. The percentage of participants who were either able to completely quit smoking or reduce the number of smoked cigarettes per day (n=19, 29.7%; n=28, 43.8%, respectively) was greater in the study group than those in the control group (n=5, 5.8%; n=5, 5.8%, respectively). Study findings demonstrated significant differences in the inability to improve readiness to quit smoking between the intervention group and control group (p=0.000) at the sixth-week follow-up.Conclusion: The tailored nursing intervention was effective for a successful achievement of smoking reduction and cessation among patients with non-communicable chronic diseases, and a potential to equip nurses in clinical settings to support patients to achieve this is recommended.
BACKGROUND: Diabetes Mellitus is a complex chronic illness that has increased significantly around the world and is expected to affect 628 million in 2045. Undiagnosed type 2 diabetes may affect 24% - 62% of the people with diabetes; while the prevalence of prediabetes is estimated to be 470 million cases by 2030. AIM OF STUDY: To find the percentage of undiagnosed diabetes and prediabetes in a slice of people aged ≥ 45years, and relate it with age, gender, central obesity, hypertension, and family history of diabetes. METHODS: A cross sectional study that included 712 healthy individuals living in Baghdad who accepted to take part in this study and fulfilling the inclusion and exclusion criteria.
... Show MoreA new colorimetric-flow injection method has been developed and validated for the detection of Cefotaxime sodium in pharmaceutical formulations. This method stands out for its rapid and sensitive nature. The formation of a brown-colored complex between Cefotaxime sodium and the Biuret reagent in a highly alkaline environment serves as the basis for the detection. The intensity of this colored complex is measured using a custom-built Continuous Flow Injection Analyzer, enabling accurate quantification of Cefotaxime sodium. Optimization studies of the chemical and physical parameters such as dilution of Biuret reagent, effect of the medium basicity, flow rate, sample loop and others have been investigated. The calibration gra
... Show MoreDetecting protein complexes in protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks is a challenging problem in computational biology. To uncover a PPI network into a complex structure, different meta-heuristic algorithms have been proposed in the literature. Unfortunately, many of such methods, including evolutionary algorithms (EAs), are based solely on the topological information of the network rather than on biological information. Despite the effectiveness of EAs over heuristic methods, more inherent biological properties of proteins are rarely investigated and exploited in these approaches. In this paper, we proposed an EA with a new mutation operator for complex detection problems. The proposed mutation operator is formulate
... Show MoreBecause of their Physico‐chemical characteristics and its composition, the development of new specific analytical methodologies to determine some highly polar pesticides are required. The reported methods demand long analysis time, expensive instruments and prior extraction of pesticide for detection. The current work presents a new flow injection analysis method combined with indirect photometric detection for the determination of Fosetyl‐Aluminum (Fosetyl‐Al) in commercial formulations, with rapid and highly accurate determination involving only construction of manifold system combined with photometric detector without need some of the pre‐treatments to the sample before the analysis such a
Background: Alveolar ridge expansion is proposed when the alveolar crest thickness is ≤5 mm. The screw expansion technique has been utilized for many years to expand narrow alveolar ridges. Recently, the osseodensification technique has been suggested as a reliable technique to expand narrow alveolar ridges with effective width gain and as little surgical operating time as possible. The current study aimed to compare osseodensification and screw expansion in terms of clinical width gain and operating time. Materials and methods: Forty implant osteotomies were performed in deficient horizontal alveolar ridges (3–5 mm). A total of 19 patients aged 21–59 years were randomized into two groups: the screw expansion group, which invo
... Show MoreGas-lift technique plays an important role in sustaining oil production, especially from a mature field when the reservoirs’ natural energy becomes insufficient. However, optimally allocation of the gas injection rate in a large field through its gas-lift network system towards maximization of oil production rate is a challenging task. The conventional gas-lift optimization problems may become inefficient and incapable of modelling the gas-lift optimization in a large network system with problems associated with multi-objective, multi-constrained, and limited gas injection rate. The key objective of this study is to assess the feasibility of utilizing the Genetic Algorithm (GA) technique to optimize t
Background: Cystinosis is a rare autosomal recessive lysosomal storage disease with high morbidity and mortality. It is caused by mutations in the CTNS gene that encodes the cystine transporter, cystinosin, which leads to lysosomal cystine accumulation. It is the major cause of inherited Fanconi syndrome, and should be suspected in young children with failure to thrive and signs of renal proximal tubular damage. The diagnosis can be missed in infants, because not all signs of renal Fanconi syndrome are present during the first months of life. Elevated white blood cell cystine content is the cornerstone of the diagnosis. Since chitotriosidase (CHIT1 or chitinase-1) is mainly produced by activated macrophages both in normal and inflammator
... Show MoreWireless sensor networks (WSNs) represent one of the key technologies in internet of things (IoTs) networks. Since WSNs have finite energy sources, there is ongoing research work to develop new strategies for minimizing power consumption or enhancing traditional techniques. In this paper, a novel Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) algorithm is proposed for mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSNs) for energy saving. Performance evaluation of the clustering process with the GMM algorithm shows a remarkable energy saving in the network of up to 92%. In addition, a comparison with another clustering strategy that uses the K-means algorithm has been made, and the developed method has outperformed K-means with superior performance, saving ener
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