Journal of Iranian Medical Council
Volume:1 Issue: 2, Autumn 2018

Four decades has been passed from when Islamic Republic of Iran established in 1979. In this long period of time, Iran achieves lots of scientific & technological improvements. Iran ranked 39th in 1979 concerning number of published papers in Scopus. This world rank has been improved to 16th in 2017. In the field of Biomedical Sciences, before Islamic republic of Iran revolution, Iran ranked as the 38th countries considering the published papers in Scopus while now it locates as the 17th country. Medical education has been dramatically improved in terms of both quantity and quality, especially when the medical education has been integrated into the health services by establishing the Ministry of Health & Medical Education. Before Islamic Republic of Iran Revolution, only 250,000 students were active in Iranian universities while now 5 million students are involved with higher education in Iran. Number of universities has been improved from 20 in 1979 to more than 2500 in 2017. Only within the Ministry of Health and Medical Education, more than 70 Universities of Medical Sciences are established and now actively accepting students, with more than 19,000 faculty members and 400,000 students. Not only the quantity of university faculty members has been increased, but also the quality of their ranks have been also improved as now many of them are full professors or associate professors. Now the country has about 51 percent highly cited biomedical scientist based on Essential Science Indicators (ESI) ranking system while this number was zero in 1979 1,2.

Opioids overdose is one of the most common medical problems that necessitate medical staff to have enough information to decrease mortality. Naloxone is used as an antidote to reverse the signs and symptoms of opioid toxicity such as respiratory depression, provided no contraindications encountered. Indications for naloxone administration in poisonings are well known. While naloxone administration without indication has some complications and may put financial burden on the patient, it can also be considered a medical error. The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of pre-hospital naloxone administration without indication among poisoned patients. In this retrospective cross-sectional study, all poisoned patients hospitalized in northwest toxicology center of Iran who had received naloxone before hospitalization were included. Data collection was performed by reviewing the patients' files. Since indications for naloxone administration in opioids overdose are well known, any other administrations out of the specified indications were considered as prescriptions without indication. In this study, 178 of the patients were men and 22 were women. Naloxone was administered in 57% of the patients; of them 31.57% had specified indication. Among these patients, 19.44% had respiratory rate less than 12 breaths per minute, 66.66% had decreased level of consciousness, and 13.88% had both conditions. All patients with oxygen saturation less than 90% had respiratory rate below 12. Results of this study showed that a high rate of naloxone was administered without indication. It is necessary to reduce such medication errors by continues training of healthcare providers.

Although the population growth in Bushehr Province is high, only few studies have been conducted on the prevalence of mental disorders among children and adolescents. This article aims to investigate the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among children and adolescents in Bushehr province that has second population growth in Iran.

This was a cross-sectional study in which the eligible subjects were 6-18 years old children and adolescents selected using the stratified random cluster sampling from rural and urban areas of Bushehr. The Persian Version of K-SADS-PL was used by trained clinical psychologists to diagnose mental and psychiatric disorders.

A total of 1037 cases consented and completed the survey. They were categorized into 3 age groups; 6 to 9, 10 to 14 and 15 to 18 years old containing 34, 33.7 and 32.3% of all. Up to 11.6% of cases including 10.2% of boys and 12.9% of girls were detected to have any kind of diagnoses through interviews with children and their parents using K-SADS-PL questionnaire. These 120 patients embraced 11.6, 9.2 and 14% of each age group, respectively. Among 120 cases with psychiatric diagnoses, anxiety disorders as a whole were the most frequent psychopathology, affecting up to 5.4% of total population.

About 1 out of 10 children and adolescents in Bushehr has any kind of psychiatric disorders. The prevalence of mental disorders was higher in girls and in adolescents.

Oral and pharyngeal cancers are among the life threatening medical conditions that cause death and disability, and have variable prevalence in different geographic regions. It is the thirteenth and seventeenth most common cancer among men and women in Iran, respectively. The aim of this study was to investigate the epidemiologic factors related to oral and pharyngeal cancers, within a period of 5 years from 2001 to 2006 in clinical and medical educational centers of Tehran. In this retrospective descriptive cross-sectional study, 256 cases were selected from 5 cancer centers. The forms were filled up by two methods including information collection from completed medical records and completion of incomplete information via calling patients on the phone using ICDO-Coding system to determine the type of malignant lesions. The SPSS software was used for data statistical analysis. Among 256 cases of this study, Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC) was the most common lesion (70.3 %) followed by Mucoepidermoid Carcinoma (MEC). The most common site of cancer was the tongue (25.8 %) followed by larynx (15.2 %). The ratio of men to women was 1.8 over 1. The mean age of patients was 40 to 70 years. SCC and MEC had the most recurrence rates and in 23 cases (11.3 %) metastasis were reported, of which 14 cases were SCC. This study found that the most common malignancy in oral cavity and pharynx was SCC similar to the literature and men were almost involved two times more than women. We suggest that medical authorities should be aware of improving the health system in terms of immediate referral to third level health care when oral cavity malignancies are suspected.

Geographic Tongue (GT) and Fissured Tongue (FT) are the most common abnormalities of the tongue that etiopathogenesis of them remains to be clarified. This study aims to evaluate the prevalence and the possible factors associated with GT/FT among students of Tabriz Dental School. This descriptive-analytic study aims to identify the demographic information and clinical features of the GT/ FT among 132 students that were selected by census method. Data were collected by means of a two-part questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software and chi-square test. Geographic tongue was found in 10 (7.58%) students (8 females and 2 males). There were no significant differences between gender and the incidence of this condition (p=0.65). Fissured tongue was present in 20 (15.15%) students (9 females and 11 males). No differences between the lesion and the gender distribution was observed (p=0.132). There was a significant correlation between not brushing teeth and fissured tongue (p=0.034). The results revealed that the oral hygiene may reduce the incidence of FT. The occurrence of GT/FT showed no association with any other systemic conditions and habits.

Tobacco consumption is controlled by various factors including individual, family and social factors. Students, especially those studying medical subjects, as role models for other members in a community, can play a major role in reducing the rate of cigarette smoking. The purpose of this study is, therefore, to determine the factors affecting medical students’ attitude towards smoking. Survey method was used in this study using questionnaire as the tool for data collection. The statistical population of the study included all students of Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Iran University of Medical Sciences in 2017, of whom 300 were selected by systematic sampling method. The results showed smoking tendency among students, higher number of male smokers (M=2.89) compared to girls (M=2.66 and p value <0.05), an effect of dormitory environment on the positive attitude towards smoking, and a high rate of smoking among students who live in dormitory (M=2.71) or bachelor pads (M=3.23) (F=9.359 and p value<0.05). The results of this study indicate an increased tendency among medical students to smoke cigarettes plus a positive attitude towards hookah smoking. This research suggest a dire need to educate students in terms of preventing and/or reducing smoking attitude among students.

Myofascial Pain Dysfunction Syndrome (MPDS) is an important facial disorder. MPDS patients complain of pain, tenderness of one or more muscles of mastication and suffer from limited function of affected muscles. The aim of this study was to compare the therapeutic effect of low level laser with naproxen for treatment of MPDS.

This clinical trial was conducted through analytical parallel-groups design on 40 patients referred to the occupational medicine center of Yazd Province. Patients were divided into 2 groups of 20 cases who then were treated for 2 weeks with naproxen or low level laser. Clinical examinations were performed before treatment and 2 weeks after treatment by an oral medicine specialist.

This study showed that both laser and naproxen were almost equally effective in the treatment of MPDS.

All clinical symptoms such as masticatory muscle tenderness and pain improved in both groups; however mouth opening ability improved much better in laser treated group.

Today, the performance of the Health, Safety, and Environment Management System (PHSE) has different dimensions depending on the type of organization or industry. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of the Health, Safety, and Environment Management System (HSE) of Saba Tire Cord Company using the Balanced Scorecard Model (BSC).

This descriptive-analytical study was carried out in 2016 at Saba Tire Company in Zanjan, Iran using the multi-criteria decision making (AHP & TOPSIS) and BSC models. To determine the validity and reliability of the tool, the content validity and the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient were used. The process of the sampling was done using an all count method among 300 employees of Saba Tire Company. Data were analyzed using SPSS 11.5, TOPSIS, and Expert Choice software Two questionnaires were used for the criteria and sub-criteria ranking and prioritization of the options.

In the 5-dimensional Balanced Scorecard, the customer dimension with 86.7% had the best performance and the financial dimension showed with the lowest score in the PHSE management system by 84.3% from the results of data analysis using Expert Choice software, the customer benchmark with the relative weight of 0.46 and the environmental criterion with a relative weight of 0.06, had the highest and the lowest scores for the panel members in the performance of the HSE management system; from the results of data analysis with the TOPSIS software, it was seen that the safety dimension (with a final value of 0.7) had higher rating than health and environment.

Among the perspectives that were analyzed in the hierarchical analysis method, the customer’s criteria were chosen as the superior benchmark for the PHSE management system.

The patient is a young man with no previous history of respiratory diseases who was given 80 mg of Accutane for acne on the face, followed by a massive hemoptysis one day prior to presentation. Chest CT scan was normal and bronchoscopy showed evidence of bleeding in the lower respiratory tract. Patient’s laboratory exams were all normal and after discontinuation of the drug, bleeding stopped and never recurred.