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.
Football has progressed from being a ritual and a celebration to become an amateur sport, a professional sport, and now, increasingly, a commercial sport. In the analysis of football business model, the systemic approach should be adopted. If sport is regarded as one of the business sectors, then the application of business system methodology can be fully justified. The interest to create strong football business system calls for the search of the ways of popularizing football business model and boosting the economic potential of its participants. In the research literature tend to ignore the business processes within the sports business. Besides, the systemic approach in football business is usually limited to p
... Show MoreBackground: Separation and deboning of artificial teeth from denture bases present a major clinical and labortory problem which affect both the patient and the dentist. The optimal bond strength of artificial teeth with denture base reinforced with nanofillers and flexible denture bases and the effect of thermo cycling should be evaluated. This study was conducted to evaluate and compare the shear bond strength of artificial teeth (acrylic and porcelain) with denture bases reinforced by 5% Zirconium oxide nanofillers and flexible bases under the effect of different surface treatments and thermo cycling and comparing the results with conventional water bath cured denture bases. Material and methods: Two types of artificial teeth; acrylic and
... Show MoreIn the present work, the magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole moments for some sodium isotopes have been calculated using the shell model, considering the effect of the two-body effective interactions and the single-particle potentials. These isotopes are; 21Na (3/2+), 23Na (3/2+), 25Na (5/2+), 26Na (3+), 27Na (5/2+), 28Na (1+) and, 29Na (3/2+). The one-body transition density matrix elements (OBDM) have been calculated using the (USDA, USDB, HBUMSD and W) two-body effective interactions carried out in the sd-shell model space. The sd shell model space consists of the active 2s1/2, 1d5/2,
... Show MoreThe Log-Logistic distribution is one of the important statistical distributions as it can be applied in many fields and biological experiments and other experiments, and its importance comes from the importance of determining the survival function of those experiments. The research will be summarized in making a comparison between the method of maximum likelihood and the method of least squares and the method of weighted least squares to estimate the parameters and survival function of the log-logistic distribution using the comparison criteria MSE, MAPE, IMSE, and this research was applied to real data for breast cancer patients. The results showed that the method of Maximum likelihood best in the case of estimating the paramete
... Show MoreMost drugs undergo some metabolism in the liver before excretion by the kidneys or bile. Thus, it is not surprising that liver injury may be provoked due to its exposure to various drugs and compounds. Drug-induced cholestatic liver injury may occur particularly under conditions of increased drug concentrations, genetic alterations in expression of enzymes or transporters. Additionally, the drug-induced cholestasis can be caused by direct toxic effects of drugs or their metabolites on different hepatic cell types or through an immune-mediated process. Amoxicillin/ clavulanic acid, an antibiotic that is therapeutically utilized for the treatment of a number of bacterial infections. Omega-3 fatty acids are unsaturated fatty acids that have ro
... Show MoreBackground: Metabolic syndrome (Mets) is partially heritable. High mobility group AT-hook1 (HMGA1), an architectural transcription factor, affects the homeostasis of glucose. The marked inter-individual differences between T
... Show MoreThe study objectives were to 1) explore the real-world experience of hospital pharmacists with the differences in effectiveness safety, and interchangeability between biosimilar medicines and their reference biological counterparts, 2) reveal pharmacist recommendations to enhance the safety of biopharmaceutical medicines in public hospitals.
The study has a mixed-method design where the core component was qualitative (interviews) and the supplemental component was quantitative (adverse drug reaction, ADR, reports). This qualitative component included semi-structured (mostly face-to-face) interviews involving hospital pharmacists from different hospitals with experience with biological or biosimilar medicines. The interviews were c
... Show MoreThe aim of this work is to evaluate some mechanical and physical
properties (i.e. the impact strength, hardness, flexural strength,
thermal conductivity and diffusion coefficient) of
(epoxy/polyurethane) blend reinforced with nano silica powder (2%
wt.). Hand lay-up technique was used to manufacture the composite
and a magnetic stirrer for blending the components. Results showed
that water had affected the bending flexural strength and hardness,
while impact strength increased and thermal conductivity decreased.
In addition to the above mentioned tests, the diffusion coefficient
was calculated using Fick’s 2nd law.