ABSTRACT
Teaching methods have huge impact over appropriate acquisition of knowledge by the intendedrecipient.Physiology course in our college is taught through lectures, laboratory sessions, tutorials, all ofwhich are teacher centered; and student-led seminars. Aim of this study was to investigate students’perceptions of the value of varying academic methods on their learning of physiology. A faculty-baseddescriptive study was conducted. 150 Pro-formas were distributed & 127 were completed. Results showedthat 108 students (85%) believed that their absence from different academic activities could affect performance.Students perceived lectures as the most valuable academic activity (90.7%), whereas seminars by studentswere perceived as least important (18.5%). There was significant correlation between lectures attendanceand performance in examinations (P-0.008). 90% students thought that teacher involvement in tutorials wasessential. These results showed that in our course, students perceived teacher involvement as a keycomponent of the learning process.
ABSTRACT
The present cross-sectional study was designed to ascertain whether regular and trained wind instrument blowers develop higher pulmonary functions than untrained or part time blowers. The study included 155 trained & regular blowers (Group A), 100 untrained part-time blowers (Group B) and 100 non-blowers (Group C). They were investigated by a computerized spirometer (RMS medspiror). Group A subjects showed a significantly higher (p<0.001) percentage predicted value for Forced Vital capacity (FVC), Forced expiratory volume in the 1st second (FEV1), Peak Expiratory Flow Rate (PEFR), Maximum Voluntary Ventilation (MVV), Forced Expiratory Flow at 25% & 50% of FVC (FEF25% & FEF50%), Forced Expiratory Flow between 25% & 75% of FVC (FEF 25-75%), FEF50% of FVC, than the other two groups. However, FEV1/FVC % in group A was not statistically higher than the other two groups (p=0.3699). Thus, regular training of wind instrument blowing increases the pulmonary functions which may be a physiological advantage of blowing.
ABSTRACT
Impaired pulmonary functions are common in cardiac patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. The objective of this study was to study sequential changes in pulmonary functions tests up to a period of 4 months after surgery. 50 patients undergoing CABG surgery were included in the study & their pulmonary functions were tested prior to surgery and repeated 7 days, 1 month and 4 months after surgery.It has been found that forced vital capacity (FVC) dropped from 85% of predicted preoperative value to 56% (P = 0.0000) on 7th postoperative day, recovered to 71.6% (P = 0.0000) 1 months after and to 84.2% (P = 0.4008) 4 months after the surgery. Forced expiratory volume in 1st second (FEV1) decreased from 88.38% to 59.06% (P = 0.0000) on the 7th postoperative day and recovered to 75.42% (P = 0.000) 1 month after the surgery and to 85.78% (P = 0.0308) 4 months after the surgery. Ratio of FEV1/FVC improved marginally from 79% preoperative value to 81% on 7th postoperative day and 1 month after and again reached to 78%, 4 months after the surgery suggestive of a restrictive ventilatory defect. We conclude that CABG produces long term changes in pulmonary functions hence pre and postoperative evaluation of pulmonary function should be done as a routine even if the patient is asymptomatic.