Background: Oral mucositis is regarded as one of the major complications of radiation therapy especially in patients with head and neck cancer. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of glutamine in preventing or minimizing the development of mucositis of the oral cavity. Subjects and methods: Forty-six participants were randomly selected amongst those who were planned to receive radiation therapy for head and neck region cancers. They were randomly divided into two groups of 23 subjects, one group received glutamine and the second group received a placebo. Results: Glutamine had a statistically significant effect in reducing the occurrence and/or severity of oral mucositis in the treated patients compared to patients in the control group. Gender and age had no effect in the development or severity of oral mucositis in the studied patients. Conclusions: It can be concluded that glutamine can be used effectively to prevent or minimize oral mucositis amongst cancer patients who receive radiation therapy.
This study aimed to incorporate hydroxyapatite nanoparticles (nHA) or amorphous calcium phosphate nanoparticles (nACP) into a self-etch primer (SEP) to develop a simplified orthodontic bonding system with remineralizing and enamel preserving properties.
nHA and nACP were incorporated into a commercial SEP (Transbond™ plus) in 7% weight ratio and compared with the plain SEP as a control. Shear bond strengths (SBS), enamel damage, and adhesive remnant index (ARI) scores were evaluated at 24 h
Rapid worldwide urbanization and drastic population growth have increased the demand for new road construction, which will cause a substantial amount of natural resources such as aggregates to be consumed. The use of recycled concrete aggregate could be one of the possible ways to offset the aggregate shortage problem and reduce environmental pollution. This paper reports an experimental study of unbound granular material using recycled concrete aggregate for pavement subbase construction. Five percentages of recycled concrete aggregate obtained from two different sources with an originally designed compressive strength of 20–30 MPa as well as 31–40 MPa at three particle size levels, i.e., coarse, fine, and extra fine, were test
... Show MoreObjective: To study the effect of epidural spinal injection over one year in case of spinal stenosis. Methodology: This prospective study included 566 patients with spinal stenosis seen at Al-Kindy Teaching and Al-Sader, Hospitals who were treated by local epidural steroid injection. They were followed up for at least five subsequent visits after seven days, one month, three months, six months, and one year to assess efficacy. Result: Mean age of patients was 49.5 years, with a predominance of females (65%). L4/L5 was the most involved level in the spinal stenosis (70%). Grade II stenosis accounted for (45.4%) of cases. The pairwise comparison revealed that there was significant decrease in proportions of patients with pain in day
... Show More‎ Since the first outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 31, 2019, COVID-19 pandemic ‎has been spreading to many countries in the world. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused a ‎major global crisis, with 554,767 total confirmed cases, 484,570 total recovered cases, and ‎‎12,306 deaths in Iraq as of February 2, 2020. In the absence of any effective therapeutics or drugs ‎and with an unknown epidemiological life cycle, predictive mathematical models can aid in ‎the understanding of both control and management of coronavirus disease. Among the important ‎factors that helped the rapid spread of the ep
... Show MoreThe university course timetable problem (UCTP) is typically a combinatorial optimization problem. Manually achieving a useful timetable requires many days of effort, and the results are still unsatisfactory. unsatisfactory. Various states of art methods (heuristic, meta-heuristic) are used to satisfactorily solve UCTP. However, these approaches typically represent the instance-specific solutions. The hyper-heuristic framework adequately addresses this complex problem. This research proposed Particle Swarm Optimizer-based Hyper Heuristic (HH PSO) to solve UCTP efficiently. PSO is used as a higher-level method that selects low-level heuristics (LLH) sequence which further generates an optimal solution. The proposed a
... Show MoreThe interest in green energy in recent years is very noticeable, as this energy is a very important alternative that can replace fuel in many applications, most notably electric power generation, so work must be done to develop a form of this energy such as wind energy by working on the development of turbines. The DMST method provided by Qblade software is an integrated tool for making a simulation of a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT). The simulation was carried out on vertical axis wind turbines, designing turbine blades according to symmetrical NACA0018, and calculating some parameters such as power, torque and power coefficient. It is found that this type of turbine can be improved by treating the blade edges that cont
... Show MoreBackground. After tooth extraction, alveolar bone resorption is inevitable. This clinical phenomenon challenges dental surgeons aiming to restore esthetic and function. Alveolar ridge preservation can be applied to minimize dimensional changes with a new socket grafting material, an autogenous dentin graft, produced by mechanically and chemically processing natural teeth. This study assessed the safety and efficacy of using autogenous dentin biomaterial in alveolar ridge preservation. Materials and Methods. Patients with nonrestorable maxillary anterior teeth bounded by natural sound teeth were included in this study. After a detailed clinical and tomographic examination, eligible participants were randomly allocated into two groups
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