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 present study is a qualitative study that aims to investigate the way the Iraqi caricaturist,Dheaa Al-Hajjar uses caricatures to produce a satirical meaning humorously.Producing satire while at the same maintaining humor requires a creative thinking on the part of the caricaturist. Thus, the study examines the production of humorous satire in terms of creativity. The analysis is done from the cognitive linguistic point of view using Arthur Koestler's theory of bisociation as presented in his book The Act of Creation in 1964. The main principle on which the theory is based is that humor is created via linking (or bisociating in Koestler's terms) two habitually incompatible trains of thought in order to come up with a novel me
... Show MoreThe emergence of staphylococci, either coagulase negative (CNS) or coagulase positive (CPS), as important human pathogens has implied that reliable methods for their identification are of large significance in understanding the diseases caused by them. The identification and characterization of staphylococci from biopsies taken from human breast tumors is reported here. Out of 32 tissue biopsies, a total of 12 suspected staphylococci grew on mannitol salt agar (MSA) medium, including 7 fermenters and 5 non-fermenter staphylococci based on traditional laboratory methods. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) successfully identified seven isolates at the genus level as methicillin resistant St
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The emergence of staphylococci, either coagulase negative (CNS) or coagulase positive (CPS), as important human pathogens has implied that reliable methods for their identification are of large significance in understanding the diseases caused by them. The identification and characterization of staphylococci from biopsies taken from human breast tumors is reported here. Out of 32 tissue biopsies, a total of 12 suspected staphylococci grew on mannitol salt agar (MSA) medium, including 7 fermenters and 5 non-fermenter staphylococci based on traditional laboratory methods. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) successfully identified seven isolates at the genus level as methicillin resistant Staphylococcus spp. by targeting a common region of the me
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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 con
... Show MoreSeventy five E. coli isolates were collected from urine of patients with urinary tract infections in AL-Kadhimia and AL-Yarmook teaching hospitals in Baghdad for a period between 22/11/2009 to 15/3/2010, from these samples twenty five isolates were selected according to their pattern of the highest resistance as these showing multi-drug resistances and tested to specify their minimum inhibitory concentration for (meropenem, gentamicin and amikacin), meropenem was found having the lowest MIC comparing with others. This study also includes in vitro effects of various combinations of three types of antimicrobials (meropenem, gentamicin and amikacin) against twenty five E. c
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With the increasing rates of cancer worldwide, a great deal of scientific discourse is devoted to arguments and statements about cancer and its causes. Scientists from different fields try to seize any available chance to warn people of the risk of consuming and exposing to carcinogens that have, unfortunately, become essential parts of modern life. The present paper attempts to investigate the proximization strategy through which scientists construct carcinogen risk to enhance people’s preventive actions against these carcinogens. The paper targets the construction which depends on producing the conflict between the values of the people themselves and the contrasting values assigned to carcinogens. To achieve this aim, Cap’s (2
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The expression of MUC5AC has been associated with the loss of the differentiation, TNM system, and nodal metastasis, in many cancers including gastric carcinoma (GC).Objective: To evaluate whether the MUC5AC could be used as a predictor in patients with GC and to assess the correlation between the expression of MUC5AC& the clinicpathological parameters as age, sex, histopathological subtypes, grade and stage of the tumor. This is a retrospective study conducted on 60 randomly selected patients (30 normal vs 30 GC), at the Pathology Department of the Gastroenterology and Hepatology Teaching Hospital&some private laboratories. They were collected and diagnosed during the period 2014-2018. Histological sections were stained with H&E and IHC st
... Show MoreBackground: lip lengthening procedure is one of the surgical options for the correction of gummy smile in patients with short upper lip. Methods: A comparative clinical study was conducted on 15 patients requiring lip lengthening procedure for the esthetic correction of excessive gingival exposure with gummy smile. Scalpel was used in seven patients and diode laser in the remaining eight patients. Under infiltration anesthesia, about one cm strip of mucosa was excised at the vestibular depth and the mucosa of the lip was sutured to the alveolar mucosa. Results: The diode laser group demonstrated less postoperative pain and swelling. Regarding postoperative ecchymosis, three patients in the scalpel group developed ecchymosis and no cases
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