Effectiveness of measuring blood pressure at home

To assess the effectiveness of measuring blood pressure at home for the management of hypertension. This study was conducted at the Royal Jordanian Air Force Medical Center, on patients visiting the family practice clinics, during the period March 2001-March 2002. A total of 4800 patients visited the clinics, but only 62 cases were studied to determine he effectiveness of advising patients to measure their blood pressure at home, for diagnosis and follow up of hypertension. A total of 62 patients, aged between 40-60 years were diagnosed to have hypertension at the clinic. The mean age was 51.2 years, whereas 47[75.8%] were males and 15[24.2%] were females. About 55 patients [88.7%] were newly diagnosed hypertension, and 7 patients [11.3%] were cases with discordance in blood pressure readings [white coat hypertension]. Blood pressure measured at home is a good predictor in the management of hypertension

Low back pain among Royal Jordanian Air Force personnel

A case-control study design was used in this work. Samples were selected by a stratified random sampling on many educational levels from military personnel. The participants were interviewed using a structured questionnaire. Cases suffering from low back pain were 266 out of 760. The results showed that those patients of 27 years and over reported to have a low back pain [64.7%] more than the younger group [35.3%] and those living sedentary life were [63.5%] more than those performing regular physical activity of at least one hour per week. Low back pain increased in non-office [field] worker [68%] than office workers [32%]. Moreover, obesity was reported in 66.5% as a contributing factor more than the non-obese [33.5%]. Also, 5.2% developed herniated nucleus pulposus

Intestinal parasitic infection among primary school children in south Jordan

This study aimed to find out the prevalence of intestinal parasitic among primary school population [the most vulnerable group] in South Jordan. Among investigations, stool specimens were collected from 2400 primary schoolchildren aged from 6-12 years and examined for the detection of intestinal parasitic infection from both urban and rural areas in South Jordan. The results indicated that the prevalence of intestinal parasitic infection was 28.5% which was more in rural than urban areas, but no sex difference was found. As regard to the type of infection, Giardia lamblia was the most common intestinal protozoa detected with a rate of 42.6% of the cases, followed by Entamoeba histolytica [26.2%]; while Enterobius vermicularis and Ascaris lumbricoides were the most common helminthes recorded in the study with rates of 5.9% and 5.4%, respectively