Improve X-ray images using quality assurance tests

In this research, entrance surface doses of patients which are resulted from a classical radiograph in most widespread tests (Chest, skull, abdomen, limbs, …) have been measured with selected instruments in (Specialized surgeries hospital) and one of the private clinic in Baghdad, the instruments are of various origins and different make date. A group of patients (10 patients) for each test and according the average of the resulted doses. Comparison of the patient’s doses, in this research, has been close with the reliable International standards and it has been found that radiological doses are bigger than reference doses ranging (132–1.79) in most of the appliance and the range doses to one whenever the instrument is new and the radiographer has good experience, this increase relates to several functions discussed in the research in detail For the importance of the quality assurance of x-ray instruments, three tests have been performed by three of the instruments only, and these tests are : Beam Alignment test : The Beam Alignment was measured and the x-ray radiograph was found symmetrical round the two axes of the instruments (A, B) but it is about 3 ° away from the vertical axis of the instrument (C). Optical and Radiation Field Congruence Test: The light field coincides with the radiative field in a and b and their mismatch in c. Focal Spot Size Test: The radiation focus area was measured by the star tool and what appeared is that the focus of the x-ray instrument (C) is smaller than the international standards on the contrary of the focus area of the x-ray instrument (E) which is identical with the international standards. From these results reached is that the instruments (A, B) have passed quality assurance tests and they are suitable for work in the present, but the instrument (C) has not passed most of the quality assurance tests, so this instrument should not be used for medical tests This in research is considered the first one for these instruments to evaluate their doses or measure a quality assurance.

TERMHOOD OF VERBS IN ENGLISH MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY

В статье проведен анализ глаголов, обозначающих различные медицинские процессы, действия и состояния, выявлена степень их терминологичности путем определения их соответствия требованиям, предъявляемым к терминам. Материалом исследования послужили словари и монографии медицинской направленности. Объект исследования - англоязычные глагольные единицы, обозначающие специальные медицинские действия или состояния. Дефиниционный, когнитивный, семантический, словообразовательный, этимологический и сравнительный методы анализа позволили всесторонне описать исследуемые глаголы как языковые единицы, способные к терминологическому функционированию. В настоящей работе на основании семантических, формальных и прагматических требований, предъявляемых к терминам, был проведен анализ специфики глагольных единиц как единиц языка для специальных целей. Исследование показало, что глагольные единицы, обозначающие специальные медицинские процессы, действия и состояния, в полной мере отвечают требованиям терминологичности и реализуют их в медицинском научном тексте. В медицинском дискурсе глаголы проявляют специфические особенности семантической организации обозначаемых ими понятий. Глаголы способны реализовывать терминологическое значение как самостоятельно, так и в сочетании с термином-существительным или прилагательным. Терминологизируясь, глаголы приобретают точное, конкретизированное значение. Некоторые специальные медицинские глаголы могут быть использованы в роли эвфемизмов. Глаголы в роли терминов, подобно терминам-существительным, способны вступать в системные отношения (полисемия, синонимия), образуются при помощи тех же словообразовательных способов, что и термины-существительные, образуются при помощи греко-латинских терминоэлементов, категориально и концептуально связаны с соответствующими терминами-существительными. Глаголы в медицинском дискурсе отражают динамические научные концепты, являются средством сохранения и передачи профессиональной информации. На основе проведенного исследования можно констатировать, что глаголы, функционирующие в медицинском дискурсе, обладают большой степенью терминологичности. Они отвечают классическим требованиям, предъявляемым к терминам. Глаголы также отвечают параметрам, накладываемым современным когнитивным терминоведением. The article analyses English verbs denoting various medical processes, actions and states, reveals their termhood by studying the way they meet requirements for terms. The materials of the study were medical dictionaries and monographs. The verbs denoting medical processes, actions and states became the objects of the investigation. The employed methods of definitional, cognitive, semantic, derivational, etymological, and comparative analyses allowed us to describe the verbs as language units capable of functioning as terms. In the present article the verbs are studied as the elements of the language for special purposes according to the semantic, formal and pragmatic requirements for the terms. The verbs denoting medical processes, actions and states completely meet these requirements and demonstrate them in medical tests. In the medical discourse the verbs manifest the peculiarities of semantic organization of the notions they denote. The verbs can show terminological meaning independently or in a combination with noun or adjective terms. Becoming terms, verbs obtain exact and specificated meaning. Some verbs with medical meaning can be used as euphemisms. Functioning as terms, verbs can enter into systemic relations (like polysemy, synonymy), they are formed by the same word-building methods as noun terms, they are formed from Greek and Latin term elements, the categories and concepts they represent are connected with the ones of corresponding noun terms. Verbs in medical discourse reflect dynamic scientific concepts and are the means to preserve and transfer professional data. The performed analysis demonstrates that the verbs functioning in the medical discourse can be considered as terms. They meet the requirements for terms as well as the requirements of modern cognitive branch of terminology science.

Acute otitis media and Covid-19 symptoms: a case report

Background: In December 2019, the first Coro­navirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) case was obse­rved in Wuhan, China, and afterward, the world has been exposed to an ongoing pandemic. The Covid-19 has different symptoms, such as fever, coughing, shortness of breath, muscular pain, headache, diarrhea, nose running, and a sore thr­oat. However, the symptoms of Covid-19 are not limited to these ones. The Case: The present study reports a 39-year-old female patient complaining of earache and hearing loss with no other Covid-19 symp­toms. The medical tests and diagnoses finally inferred that she was suffering from the Covid-19. Conclusion: In addition to the common symp­toms of Covid 19, acute otitis media can be con­sidered as another symptom of this disease. Keywords: Acute otitis media; Covid-19; conductive hearing loss

Informal Sperm Donation in Russia

Rising infertility across the globe has created a growing demand for assisted reproductive technologies (ART). In recent years, apart from sperm donation in formal settings such as fertility clinics, informal donation practices have emerged and spread across Russia. These reproductive donation practices have become possible due to the development of social networks and private online platforms. We conducted a pilot study (eleven semi-structured interviews) of the informal sperm donation in Russia and analyzed donor-recipient interactions, donors’ expectations and experiences of finding recipients online. We focus on donors' motivations and on the meanings, which donors invest in this practice that consumes significant resources on their part (medical tests and artificial insemination costs, travel and accommodation expenses, sometimes mutually agreed financial support of future offspring). We interpreted the practices that coalesced around informal donation from the perspective of symbolic interactionism, because it allowed us to showcase how actors reflected on and formulated the meanings of their actions in the absence of externally imposed rules (legal regulations, established moral conventions). Since informal donation practices do not fit into the traditional schemes of interpretation, such research requires the actors involved in informal donation either to create their own schemes or to modify the existing conceptual frames in creative ways. The study shows that informal donors do not only provide their genetic material but also spend time and invested considerable resources to ensure their procreation, including eventual financial support of the child. At the same time, these men are not interested in marital relations or paternal relations with their offspring. Thus, the informal sperm donors do not associate the parental project with traditional family and its values. We conclude that ART engendered a new phenomenon, which might be described as extramarital reproduction. Assisted reproduction outside marriage ­gains footing in Russia and requires more detailed further study.

Mobile Application to Detect Covid-19 Pandemic by Using Classification Techniques: Proposed System

<p class="0abstract">Various mobile applications such as Mobile Health (mHealth) have been developed and spread across the world which has played an important role in mitigating the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads, several people have drawn parallels to influenza. While both viruses cause respiratory infections, they propagate in very different ways. This has a major impact on the public health measures that can be used to fight each virus. These viruses are pandemic-causing in the same way. That is, they both cause respiratory disease, and can present themselves in several ways, ranging from asymptomatic to severe and deadly. A proposal is presented in this paper that uses two algorithms to define and classify these pandemics, they are: The Back Propagation (BP) classification algorithm and the Fuzzy C-Mean (FCM) clustering algorithm. Two stages are implemented in the proposed system: in the first step, the FCM algorithm is used to find out the type of virus, and this algorithm is capable of handling ambiguous features of viruses. In the second step, a BP neural network is used as a classifier to detect the pandemic class. The proposed system was trained and tested using a well-known dataset (covid-19 vs influenza). Information Gain (IG) is used to optimize the related features that affect the classification process to improve speed and accuracy. The proposed mobile application is developed to support users easily detecting the COVID-19 infection by inputting the medical tests as significant features to the proposed system. The proposed system's accuracy is up to (89%), the framework was created using the Matlab programming environment and an Android Studio for Mobil application designing.</p>

How to Minimize Patient Anxiety From Screening Mammography

Anxiety has been portrayed by the media and some organizations and societies as one of the harms of mammography. However, one experiences anxiety in multiple different medical tests that are undertaken, including screening examinations; it is not unique to mammography. Some may argue that because this anxiety is transient, the so-called harm is potentially overstated, but for some women the anxiety is significant. Anxiety can increase or decrease the likelihood of obtaining a screening mammogram. There are multiple ways that anxiety associated with screening mammography can be diminished, including before, during, and after the examination. These include simple measures such as patient education, improved communication, being aware of the patient’s potential discomfort and addressing it, validating the patient’s anxiety as well as providing the patient with positive factual data that can easily be implemented in every breast center. More complex interventions include altering the breast center environment with multisensory stimulation, reorganization of patient flow to minimize wait times, and relaxation techniques including complementary and alternative medicine. In this article we will review the literature on measures that can be taken to minimize anxiety that would maximize the likelihood of a woman obtaining an annual screening mammogram.

Meso-Level Racism in Medicine

This article highlights that the standardization of medical care in the U.S. relies on clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), which indicate institutionalized norms about when and under what circumstances it is appropriate to administer specific medical tests and courses of treatment. However, when CPGs in medicine derive from medical research that was informed by since-debunked ideas about race, they may also facilitate structural racism.

Relating SARS-CoV-2 shedding rate in wastewater to daily positive tests data: A consistent model based approach

During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has been engaged to complement medical surveillance and in some cases to also act as an early diagnosis indicator of viral spreading in the community. Most efforts worldwide by the scientific community and commercial companies focused on the formulation of protocols for SARS CoV-2 analysis in wastewater and approaches addressing the quantitative relationship between WBE and medical surveillance are lacking. In the present study, a mathematical model is developed which uses as input the number of daily positive medical tests together with the highly non-linear shedding rate curve of individuals to estimate the evolution of virus shedding rate in wastewater along calendar days. A comprehensive parametric study by the model using medical surveillance data for the city of Thessaloniki (~700,000 inhabitants, North Greece) reveals the conditions under which WBE can be used as an early warning tool for predicting pandemic outbreaks. It is shown that early warning capacity is not the same along the days of an outbreak and varies strongly with the number of days apart between the day of maximum shedding rate of individuals in their disease cycle and the day of their medical testing. Moreover, the present data show that there exists a proportion between unreported cases (asymptomatic persons and patients with mild symptoms that do not seek medical advice) and reported cases. The proportion is not steady but increases with the number of reported cases. The early detection capacity of WBE improves substantially in the presence of an increasing number of unreported cases. For Thessaloniki at the peak of the pandemic in mid-November 2020, the number of unreported cases reached a maximum around 4 times the number of reported people.