Assessment of quality of life for adult cancer patients in Alexandria

Quality of life issues for patients with cancer have taken on new emphasis and importance in cancer treatment and care for the purpose of tertiary cancer prevention. The concern for assessing the psychological, social, functional, and spiritual needs of cancer patients has extensively increased in recent years for better palliative and curative treatments. Thus, the present study was designed to assess the quality of life for adult cancer patients in order to characterize them and their needs across multiple 'domains and age grouping. One hundred twelve adult cancer outpatients from Oncology Unit, University Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Alexandria, Egypt, constitute the subjects for this study. Patients were interviewed to fill out sheets of EORTC QLQ-C30 plus sheets with other domains to characterize demographics, functional status, primary diagnosis, presence of metastatics, pain, disease duration, home setting and social support, and type of treatment and its duration. Data were analyzed using the program of MS-Excel 2003. Adult subjects [n = l 12, 100%] were divided into male [n = 38, 33.9%] and female [n = 74, 66.1%] groups and into three age groups: younger than 40 years [20.5%], 40 to 60 years [65.2%], and older than 60 years [14.3%]. Quality of life was moderate for almost all patients. However, no statistical significant difference was found between variables of quality of life for age or gender groups. Statistical significant association was found only between QOL total score and duration of the disease, showing poor QOL more prevalence at disease duration of less than 2 years. The results suggest that quality of life can be assessed and conducted through an outpatient cancer community using a self-report format. Despite variations in demographics across different gender and age groups, the present study demonstrated remarkable similarities between male and female, and younger and older cancer patients in terms of functional status and quality of life. However, newly diagnosed cancer patients need special care in order to adapt them to the new disease especially that the QOL among them was the worst

Ocular disorders among schoolboys in a high-altitude area of Saudi Arabia

A study was conducted to measure the prevalence of eye problems amongst schoolboys in a high-altitude area of Saudi Arabia and to compare the findings with those in schoolboys from a low-altitude area of the country. We selected 971 schoolboys randomly from six of the 17 elementary schools for boys in Abha in the Asir region, southwestern Saudi Arabia. All children were subjected to a standard ophthalmologic examination. The same examination had been used in 1982 in the study of schoolboys in Al-Asiah, a low-altitude area in the Qasim region of Saudi Arabia, with which the data from the Abha study were compared. There was a higher prevalence in Abha of both refractive errors [30.6% vs 12.1%] and allergic conjunctivitis [10.7% vs 1.1%] while there was significantly lower prevalence in Abha than in Al-Asiah of trachoma [4.7% vs 14.8%], bacterial conjunctivitis [0.1% vs 7.9%] and strabismus [3.0% vs 5.3%]. Such differences in prevalence could be attributed to altitude, climate, socio-economic factors, or a combination of these. Further studies are needed to determine whether the findings of this study are altitude dependent

Growth and nutritional status of preschool children attending the well-baby clinics

This study aimed at the assessment of growth and nutritional status of preschool children by comparing it with internationally recognized growth standards, using the anthropometric indices of nutritional status. A cross-sectional study was carried out upon a sample of children [N = 660] aged 0-71 months who attended the well-baby clinics in the MCH centres in Alexandria. Individual measurements of weight and height were done for each child. Anthropometric indices of weight and height were calculated. These indices were related to the US National Centre of Health Statistics [NCHS] reference population by standard deviation scores [Z-scores]. The growth pattern of children was different from that of western reference populations, while it resembled that of most developing countries. Of all children, 10.5% suffered from malnutrition [weight for age <2 S.D. of the reference median], 14.1% were stunted, and 5.5% were wasted. Parents of all children were interviewed, and analysis of specific social risk factors associated with poor attained size was done using stepwise multiple regression analysis. Few of such factors reached statistically significant association such as sex, infant feeding pattern, birth order and parental consanguinity