Background: Quality of life in brain tumor patients is an emerging issue and has prompted neurosurgeons to recon¬sider the need for cognitive assessment in the course of treatment. To date there has been a lack of comprehensive neuropsychological assessment performed preoperatively and in the acute postoperative period in our hospitals.Objectives: to establish the effects of tumors and their surgical treatment, from a neuropsychological perspective, on cognitive functioning in patients with cerebral Gliomas. Methods: This is a prospective study conducted in the Neurosurgical Hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, during the period from January 1999 to January 2001. Any patient admitted during the period of the study with clinical history, signs, symptoms, and contrast enhanced MRI suggesting a cerebral glioma and confirmed by postoperative histopathological results of glioma has been included in this study. While multifocal lesions, long-lasting epilepsy, use of antiepileptic therapy, multiple cranial lesions, previous cranial surgery, any chronic illness, and histopathological result of other tumors were exclusion criteria. All patients were at their first operation for brain tumors. Patients were examined by analyzing several functional domains (intelligence, executive functions, memory, language, praxis, gnosis and mood state) in order to establish the effect of tumor and surgery on cognition.Results: 29 patients who fulfilled the selection criteria were included. Mean duration of clinical history was 5 months (range 1–9 months). At baseline, using test- and domain-based criteria, 79% and 38% of patients, respectively, were impaired, the former related to tumor factors such as edema (P < 0.05), larger size (P < 0.05) and higher grade (P = 0.001). Verbal memory, visuospatial memory and word fluency were the most frequently affected functions, partly associated with depression. Postoperatively, 38% and 55% of patients, respectively, were unchanged, 24% and 21% improved, and 38% and 24% worsened; 24% and 62% of patients were intact, respec-tively.Conclusions: The extent of removal did not influence the outcome. Improvement involved previously impaired functions and was correlated with high-grade tumors. Worsening regar¬ded executive functions was related to tumor size and was partly explained by radiological findings on postoperative MRI. This prospective study, focusing on the effects of tumor and surgery, showed that tumor significantly affects cognitive func¬tions, mainly due to the mass effect and higher grading. Surgical treatment improved the functions most frequently affected preoperatively and caused worsening of execu¬tive functions soon after operation, leaving the overall cognitive burden unchanged and capable of improvement prospectively.
The services provided by the municipal institutions of the basic things needed by the man in his daily life and the evolution of cities basically depends on these services and therefore has paid most of the world's attention to this vital facility and give him the biggest concern for the welfare of the citizens, as is the research problem that there is no program scrutiny to evaluate the performance of municipal institutions contribute to measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the services provided and was based on research on the premise that the preparation of the existence of audit program to evaluate the performance of municipal institutions contribute to measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of services provided has reac
... Show MoreThe optimization calculations are made to find the optimum properties of combined quadrupole lens consist of electrostatic and magnetic lenses to produce achromatic lens. The modified bell-shaped model is used and the calculation is made by solving the equation of motion and finding the transfer matrices in convergence and divergence planes, these matrices are used to find the properties of lens as the magnification and aberrations coefficients. To find the optimum values of chromatic and spherical aberrations coefficients, the effect of both the excitation parameter of the lens (n) and the effective length of the lens into account as effective parameters in the optimization processing
A batch adsorption system was applied to study the adsorption of methylene blue from aqueous solution by Iraqi bentonite and treated bentonite with different amount of zinc oxide (ZnO). The adsorption capacities of methylene blue onto bentonite were evaluated. The equilibrium between liquid and solid phase was described by Langmuir model better than the Freundlich model. Langmuir and Freundlich constants have been determined. The separation factor or equilibrium parameter, RL which is used to predict if an adsorption system is favourable or unfavourable was calculated for all cases.
In this research, CNRs have been synthesized using pyrolysis of plastic waste(pp) at 1000 ° C for one hour in a closed reactor made from stainless steel, using magnesium oxide (MgO) as a catalyst. The resultant carbon nano rods were purified and characterized using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD). The surface characteristics of carbon rods were observed with the Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The carbon was evenly spread and had the highest concentration from SEM-EDX characterization. The results of XRD and FESEM have shown that carbon Nano rods (CNRs) were present in Nano figures, synthesized at 1000 ° C and with pyrolysis temperature 400° C. One of t
... Show MoreFluidization process is widely used by a great assortment of industries worldwide and represents a trillion dollar industry [6]. They are currently used in separation, classification, drying and mixing of particles, chemical reactions and regeneration processes; one of these processes is the mass transfer from an immersed surface to a gas fluidized bed
In this paper, a new technique is offered for solving three types of linear integral equations of the 2nd kind including Volterra-Fredholm integral equations (LVFIE) (as a general case), Volterra integral equations (LVIE) and Fredholm integral equations (LFIE) (as special cases). The new technique depends on approximating the solution to a polynomial of degree and therefore reducing the problem to a linear programming problem(LPP), which will be solved to find the approximate solution of LVFIE. Moreover, quadrature methods including trapezoidal rule (TR), Simpson 1/3 rule (SR), Boole rule (BR), and Romberg integration formula (RI) are used to approximate the integrals that exist in LVFIE. Also, a comparison between those methods i
... Show MoreClinical index is needed to predict the outcome of pregnancy after in vitro fertilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection-embryo transfer (IVF/ICSI-ET) for infertile patients. Growth differentiation factor-8 (GDF-8), also known as myostatin, is one of transforming growth factor-â superfamily localized in antral follicles in normal and PCOS ovaries but its function in female reproductive system is still unknown. Aim of the study is to assess the correlation between levels of GDF8 in follicular fluid (FF) with outcomes of in vitro fertilization (IVF/ICSI) in women with and without PCOS. A prospective case control study was performed enrolling (40) patients with PCOS and (40) non-PCOS women (male infertility) undergoing IVF/ICSI. The collect
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