Self-Care Skills of Children With Pervasive Developmental Disorders

Self-care skills are the everyday tasks undertaken so children are ready to participate in life activities. While they are typically supported by parents or carers in young children, it is expected that children develop independence while getting older and maturing. Self-care skills are assumed as precursors for most school-related tasks, are expected to be performed independently, and usually it becomes inappropriate for others to assist for tasks related to these. Assistive technology enhances to strengthen children's ability to participate in eating, dressing, bathing, and personal hygiene routines. As a self-management tool, assistive technology helps children with pervasive developmental disorders or mild intellectual disabilities promote to perform daily tasks involved in activities related to self-care skills. In this chapter, first, information about self-care problems with a focus on children with pervasive developmental disorders is given. Then, opportunities, challenges, and assistive tools are presented. Finally, future research directions in this domain are stated.

Developing a Reablement Program Aimed at Preventing Unnecessary Care Transitions After Geriatric Rehabilitation

Patients returning home after geriatric rehabilitation may encounter several challenges related to daily functioning, which only manifest after returned home due to the large difference in environment and amount of support provided in both settings. This study aimed to develop an intervention preventing transitional care. A co-creation design was used, including literature research, observations, interviews, and working groups including a variety of stakeholders (n=13), including care professionals, policymakers of the municipality, client representatives, and an expert in the field of geriatric rehabilitation. Results indicated four main causes for transitional care problems: lack of communication between patients and professionals, coordination and continuity of care, patients’ limited self-management skills, and insufficient preparation. To solve these problems, an intervention was developed consisting of six intervention components aiming to increase self-management during meaningful daily activities, narrow the gap between the rehabilitation and home setting, and enhance communication and coordination.

Clustering Analysis of the Care Problems of People with Dementia Based on the Minimum Spanning Tree Algorithm: A Cross-sectional Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Recognizing the correlations between care problems of people with dementia could be beneficial, as it may help clinicians choose treatment methods because related symptom groups may respond to the same treatment intervention. However, generalizable data on the prevalence of care problems and potential clusters of care problems in people with dementia in China remain unavailable. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to (1) evaluate the prevalence of various care problems of people with dementia, and (2) explore the core care problems and the correlation between care problems of people with dementia. METHODS A cross-sectional study design was adopted to identify the care problems of people with dementia reported by family caregivers. The questionnaire consisted of two parts. The first part was mainly socio-demographic questions of people with dementia. The second part was the care problems evaluation sheet which involved three aspects: daily living care problems, behavioral and psychological symptoms, and safety risks. Care problems of people with dementia were measured with this care problems evaluation sheet. Clustering analysis of the care problems based on Kruskal's minimum spanning tree (MST) algorithm was performed in the Jupyter Notebook software to explore the core care problems and the correlation between care problems. RESULTS A total of 687 participants were included in the analysis. In general, the prevalence of having difficulty in language performance, agitated behavior, incidence of falls was relatively higher in people with dementia, which distressed their family caregivers. Through the clustering analysis based on the Kruskal's MST algorithm, the 63 care problems were clustered into 7 clusters. The 7 core care problems were “Don't know how to dress in order”, “Refusing to take a bath”, “Bedridden”, “Hitting, kicking, pushing, or biting others”, “Pacing and aimless wandering”, “Complaining”, and “Choking on food”. CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of various care problems was high. Through the clustering analysis, care problems were clustered into 7 clusters and 7 core care problems were identified. The identity of just a few core care problems instead of a large number of them might have relevant clinical implications, in the sense that it may lead to a greater ease in the identification of underlying etiologies and to more rational treatments in people with dementia.

Classification and action rules in identification and self-care assessment problems

BACKGROUND: Disability, especially in children, is a very important and current problem. Lack of proper diagnosis and care increases the difficulty for children to adapt to disabilities. Disabled children have many problems with basic activities of daily living. Therefore, it is very important to support diagnosticians and physiotherapists in recognizing self-care problems in children. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper is to extract classification and action rules, useful for those who work with children with disabilities. METHODS: First, features and their impact on the accuracy of classification are determined. Then, two models are built: one with all features and one with selected ones. For these models the classification rules are extracted. Finally, action rules are mined and the next step in treatment process is predicted. RESULTS: Seventeen features with the greatest impact on classifying a child into a particular group of self-care problems were identified. Based on the implemented algorithms, decision and action rules were obtained. CONCLUSIONS: The obtained model, selected attributes and extracted classification and action rules can support the work of therapists and direct their work to those areas of disability where even a minimal reduction of features would be of great benefit to the children.

Phytochemical screening, antiobesity, antidiabetic and antimicrobial assessments of Orobanche aegyptiaca from Palestine

Background Microbial resistance, diabetes mellitus, and obesity are global health care problems that have posed a serious threat to both human and environmental ecosystems. The goals of the present investigations are to investigate the phytoconstituents, antilipase, anti-α-amylase, and antimicrobial activity of Orobanche aegyptiaca Pers. (OA) from Palestine. Methods Identification of the phytoconstituents of OA plant petroleum ether, methylene chloride, chloroform, acetone, and methanol extracts were conducted using pharmacopeia’s methods, while porcine pancreatic lipase and α–amylase inhibitory activities were examined using p-nitrophenyl butyrate and 3,5-dinitro salicylic acid methods, respectively. Moreover, the antimicrobial activity was evaluated utilizing broth microdilution assay against eight bacterial and fungal strains. Results The phytochemical screening results showed that the methanol extract of the OA plant is rich in phytochemical components, also this extract has powerful antilipase potential with an IC50 value of 19.49 ± 0.16 μg/ml comparing with the positive control (Orlistat) which has antilipase activity with IC50 value of 12.3 ± 0.35 μg/ml. Moreover, the methanol and chloroform extracts have powerful α-amylase inhibitory activity with IC50 values of 28.18 ± 0.22 and 28.18 ± 1.22 μg/ml, respectively comparing with Acarbose which has α-amylase inhibitory activity with IC50 dose of 26.3.18 ± 0.28 μg/ml. The antibacterial results showed that the methylene chloride extract exhibited the highest antibacterial activity among the other OA plant extracts with a MIC value of 0.78 mg/ml against S. aureus, while, the methylene chloride, petroleum ether, and chloroform extracts of the OA plant showed potential antifungal activity against C. albicans strains with MIC value of 0.78 mg/ml. Conclusion The OA methanol and chloroform extracts could be excellent candidates as antilipase and anti-α-amylase bioactive materials. In addition, methylene chloride, petroleum ether, and chloroform extracts could be potential natural antimicrobial products.

Maternal smoking during pregnancy and asthma during the first year of life: a comparative study between smokers and non-smoker mothers

Background: We investigated the relationship between maternal smoking in pregnancy and health care problems in the offspring during the first year of life, particularly asthma.Material and Methods: A cohort of 648 consecutive infants born at term and alive at Hospitalde Sagunto (Valencia, Spain) over one year period was followed for 12 months. Clinical data of the infants were prospectively collected from the database of ambulatory medical records (ABUCASIS) of the Valencia health system.Results: Smoking during pregnancy was recorded in 164 (25.3%) mothers. During the first year of life, asthma was diagnosed in 101 infants, with an incidence of 15.7%. The diagnoses of asthma (25.6% vs. 12.3%; P < 0.0001) and bronchiolitis (44.5% vs. 28.6%; P = 0.0002) during the first year of life were more common among infants in the smoking group. The probability of developing asthma during the first year of life was two-fold higher for the male gender and 2.5 times higher when mothers smoked while pregnant. Up to 52% of asthma cases could have been avoided in infants born to smoking mothers if they did not smoke during pregnancy. Infants in the smoking group showed a lower weight and length at birth than infants in the nonsmoking group differences almost disappeared at 6 months and 12 months.Conclusion: Asthma during the first year of life showed a clear relationship with maternal smoking in pregnancy. Pregnant women should be advised of the significant perinatal risk for respiratory diseases associated with tobacco use.

Increasing the Prediction Accuracy for Thyroid Disease: A Step Towards Better Health for Society

A healthy life is essential for a happy society, however it is a fact that seemingly invisible diseases plague our families and people suffer. The thyroid disease falls in such a category. Thyroid disorders are long-term and with carefully handled illnesses, people with thyroid disorders may also live stable and normal lives. Thyroid diagnosis, particularly for an inexperienced clinician, is a difficult proposal. Many researchers have established various methods for the diagnosis of the disease and several models for disease prediction have been developed. As with several other domains, machine learning approaches to modelling health care problems is gaining popularity. This study aims at providing solutions towards such a thyroid disease prediction. Dimension reduction techniques are applied, and reduced dimension data input to classifiers. Also, data augmentation is applied so as to be able to generate sufficient data for deep neural network model. Classifier prediction is compared to other similar researches. Real life dataset for thyroid disease has been used, and experiments conducted in distributed environment. Our proposed two stage approach gives a maximum accuracy of 99.95% which is very good as compared to existing techniques. We have shown that dimension reduction and data augmentation can be used very efficiently for achieving high accuracy of disease prediction.

Knowledge about SUSALUD and other factors associated with filing complaints due to patient care issues at a national hospital in Lima, Peru 2019

Introduction: There is little evidence regarding the knowledge of the National Superintendence of Health (Superintendencia Nacional de Salud, SUSALUD), and health rights. The objective of this study was to determine the factors associated with filing complaints in patients treated at a Level III-1 health facility of the Ministry of Health (MINSA) in Lima 2019. Methods: Cross-sectional study on Internal Medicine patients treated at a Level III-1 health facility of MINSA, Lima, Peru in 2019. We used a modified survey taken from the complaints and knowledge about SUSALUD section from the questionnaire of the National Health User Satisfaction Survey (ENSUSALUD 2016). Prevalence ratios were estimated through simple and multiple regression. Results: Of 250 patients, the average age was 52 years and most of them were women (61.2%). Of the total, 37.3% made some health care complaints. The majority of the patients knew about the complaints book (66.4%), but only 30% knew about SUSALUD. Knowing SUSALUD (PR=3.33, CI95%: 1.81-6.11), the right to access health services (PR=1.15, CI95%: 0.41-3.29) and the right to be informed (PR=2.65, CI95%: 1.07-6.60) were associated with a greater frequency of filing health care complaints. Conclusions: The frequency of complaints due to care problems is high. The knowledge about SUSALUD, the right to access health services and the right to be informed were positively associated with filing any type of complaint. Keywords: Knowledge, complaints, health care, hospitals (Source: DECS)