Lived Experiences of International Midwifery Students in Turkey during the Coronavirus Pandemic: A Phenomenological Study

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the lives of people in many areas of the world. Similarly, international students have also experienced some physical, mental, and social changes during the Covid-19 pandemic. They have not been able to go to their home countries for several reasons, like economic problems, permissions and restrictions, and uncertainty. Therefore, their needs such as physical, financial and psychosocial support should be recognised and met. This study aimed to investigate the lived experiences of international midwifery students in Turkey during the Covid-19 pandemic. Using a phenomenological methodology, 18 in-depth interviews were completed via an online video programme, and a thematic analysis was completed. Eighteen international midwifery students were reached by the snowball technique of the purposive sampling method in a city in the Black Sea region. A content analysis method was applied in order to analyse the data, and the comments were expressed descriptively. Eight themes, and subthemes for each of them, were analysed. The themes are the effects of the pandemic on daily life;health;social life;education;mental health;being infected in Turkey;the changes caused by the pandemic in individuals;and the ways to cope with the pandemic. The study concluded that the students' daily social lives, physical and mental health, and education had been affected by the pandemic. In spite of all its negative sides, the pandemic had some positive contributions for the students, such as helping them to discover and know themselves and become stronger. © Unisa Press 2022.

DeepChestNet: Artificial intelligence approach for COVID-19 detection on computed tomography images

The conventional approach for identifying ground glass opacities (GGO) in medical imaging is to use a convolutional neural network (CNN), a subset of artificial intelligence, which provides promising performance in COVID-19 detection. However, CNN is still limited in capturing structured relationships of GGO as the texture and shape of the GGO can be confused with other structures in the image. In this paper, a novel framework called DeepChestNet is proposed that leverages structured relationships by jointly performing segmentation and classification on the lung, pulmonary lobe, and GGO, leading to enhanced detection of COVID-19 with findings. The performance of DeepChestNet in terms of dice similarity coefficient is 99.35%, 99.73%, and 97.89% for the lung, pulmonary lobe, and GGO segmentation, respectively. The experimental investigations on DeepChestNet-Lung, DeepChestNet-Lobe and DeepChestNet-COVID datasets, and comparison with several state-of-the-art approaches reveal the great potential of DeepChestNet for diagnosis of COVID-19 disease. © 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Determining the relationship between death anxiety with depression, anxiety, and stress levels in women during the COVID-19 pandemic: A sample from Turkey

INTRODUCTION During the pandemic, mental problems such as depression, anxiety, and stress may increase death anxiety. Thus, this study aims to examine women's levels of depression, anxiety, stress, and death anxiety, and to investigate the correlation between them, during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS This descriptive-correlational study was conducted on 665 women using an online survey in Turkey. The research sample was determined by applying convenience sampling and snowball methods according to the principle of accessibility-availability. RESULTS The mean Death Anxiety Scale score of the participants was 8.97±3.35, and the mean scores of depression, anxiety, stress and total Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) were 5.23±3.93, 3.47±2.93, 5.99±3.74 and 14.69±9.51, respectively. A significant relationship was found between the women's death anxiety and their depression, anxiety, and stress levels. These findings indicate that the women had moderate death anxiety, mild depression, everyday anxiety, and stress levels. With the pandemic, death anxiety increased in women, especially those with chronic diseases and a history of medical or psychiatric illnesses. CONCLUSIONS The results of the study show that there was a significant positive correlation between the stress, depression, and anxiety levels of the women and their death anxiety. It is profoundly essential for the midwives and nurses charged with serving and caring for women to be conscious and aware of the issue. © 2022,European Journal of Midwifery.All Rights Reserved.

An assessment of cardiovascular health risks in people working from home during the pandemic period: PANDEV-KALP study

Background and Aim: The COVID-19 pandemic had multi-faceted impacts on the working population who had to adapt to working from home (WFH). WFH has been reported to increase the rate of depression and anxiety due to social isolation;however, the cardiovascular effects of WFH are not well known yet. We aimed to assess the effects of WFH on cardiovascular risk factors and health behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method(s): Companies that employ WFH were invited to study by occupational health specialists via respective human resources departments. WFH employees were sent an online self-reported questionnaire which included demographics, WFH conditions, medical history, new complaints during the pandemic, health behaviors during and before the pandemic, and COVID-19 exposure. Participants were also asked to provide data on blood pressure, blood glucose, and lipid levels before and during the pandemic. Data collection started in January 2022 and ended in July 2022. Two hundred forty- five participants were invited, 208 completed the questionnaire (response rate: 84%), and 61 provided biological data (response rate: 25%). Result(s): Demographic data are presented in Table 1. Regarding WFH, 72 (34.6%) participants had undergone training for WFH conditions, and 87 (41.8%) were able to give regular breaks. Weekly working hours have increased by 6 hours during the pandemic (49.6+/-13.8 vs. 43.8+/-12.1, p=0.001, t-test). Participants reported a median 7.5-point satisfaction regarding WFH on a 10-point scale. One hundred-twelve (53.8%) participants had a new complaint;the most common complaints were weight gain/increased appetite (73, 35.1%), insomnia/anxiety (58, 27.9%), and physical inactivity/musculoskeletal pain (38, 18.3%). One hundred-twenty (57.7%) participants had a weight increase, an increase in median BMI (p=0.001, Wilcoxon signed-rank test), and a shift toward pre-obesity was observed (p=0.001, chi-square test, Table 2). Most participants did not have changes in tobacco or alcohol consumption or exercise during the pandemic. Seventy-nine (37.9%) participants had a history of COVID-19 infection, and 165 (79.3%) had a relative infected with COVID-19. Data from the biological data subgroup did not show significant changes in blood pressure, blood glucose, or lipid levels. Conclusion(s): WFH adversely affected modifiable cardiovascular risk factors, and was associated with weight gain, increased work hours, caused a lack of workload planning, and increased anxiety. Previous observational studies have reported increased sedentary behavior, alcohol and food intake, and weight gain. This study adds to the literature that although risk factors are adversely affected by WFH conditions, workers were satisfied with WFH. The training rate regarding WFH conditions was low in our study;therefore, we believe WFH workers must be informed about WFH conditions, and occupational health specialists should focus on reducing specific risk factors that exist during WFH. (Table Presented).

The Covid-19 Pandemic and Artificial Intelligence (Ai) Applications in Health: How Much Are We Interested In?

Purpose: New viruses have emerged, causing global damage and mass deaths that can spread to international borders, the latest of which is the new coronavirus (COVID-19). After the Second International Congress on Artificial Intelligence in Health, themed "Artificial Intelligence in Health During COVID-19 Pandemic Process" organized online by Izmir Bakircay University and Izmir Provincial Health Directorate with the contributions of the International Association of Artificial Intelligence in Health, a questionnaire was conducted to evaluate the knowledge of the participants about artificial intelligence applications.Material and Methods: This study aimed to evaluate the interest of the congress participants in this field with the questions which form the questionnaire such as the duration of the interest of the participants in the field of artificial intelligence in health, their publication status, the development of studies on artificial intelligence with the COVID-19 pandemic, demographic structures such as age and gender, and educational level. 130 participants answered the questionnaire consisting of 23 questions. Questionnaire responses were analyzed in a statistical setting.Results: We found that 130 people filled out the questionnaire and the majority of the participants were female, with participation from many organizations, but university staff showed more interest. We have seen that the 30-39 age group is more interested in artificial intelligence than the other age groups, but the majority of the participants do not have academic studies in this field. We found that the technical terms related to artificial intelligence were not well known by the participants, and that the number of participants who tended to this field, especially in the recent year, was high. Another important point was that people working in this field stated that they would definitely follow up if scientific activities continued.Conclusion: We know how important congresses, symposiums, courses and other meetings are, especially for scientist candidates, which will be held to raise awareness about the usage areas of artificial intelligence-based health technologies, to develop new communication and work networks by bringing together different disciplines, to create an agenda and to lay the groundwork for new studies, and we think that there is a need for many repetitive activities in this field and that these activities should be continued.

Real-world experience of ocrelizumab in MS in the Turkish population: A singlecenter study

Background and aims: Ocrelizumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody effective against CD20 positive B cells, approved by the FDA in 2017 to treat RRMS and PPMS. Despite these clinical studies, real-life data on ocrelizumab are limited. Methods: We conducted a retrospective single-center study in Turkey. We obtained medical record data of patients who received at least one infusion of ocrelizumab and were followed for one year before and after treatment initiation. Results: 240 MS patients were included in our study (58.75%) RRMS, (21.25%) SPMS, and (20%) PPMS). Median follow-up was14 months (range, 4-42). 92% of all patients received another DMT or immunosuppressant (98.58% of RRMS, 100% of SPMS, 64.58% of PPMS) prior to treatment with ocrelizumab. ARR before and after initiation of ocrelizumab for both the RRMS and SPMS groups (RRMS, 0.8 vs. 0.1;SPMS, 0.44 vs. 0.04). The most common reason for switching to ocrelizumab was clinical and/or radiological activity. NEDA status at year one was achieved in 88.54% of the RRMS population, and disability progression was found at 12.77% in the same MS subtype. Despite premedication (97.91%), infusion-related reactions were reported in (15.41%). The most common infection in our study was COVID-19 infection (18.33%), followed by urinary and upper respiratory tract infections. Conclusion: According to the first real-world preliminary study in the Turkish MS population using ocrelizumab, it is a well-tolerated, safe, and effective treatment agent in suppressing disease activity in both RRMS and progressive MS forms.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 Infection in a Child with Mild Symptoms and Atypical Course

The number of children infected with new type coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is relatively small;its atypical, mild, and unexpected clinical pictures can be suggested as the reason. In this article, we reported a 25-month-old girl patient without any symptom besides high fever and who had no risk factor or suspicious contact. Also, she developed maculopapular rash that is not reported before in the COVID-19 patients to the best of our knowledge. In the pandemic states, any symptom should be evaluated as potential COVID-19 and detection and isolation of these cases are necessary as it can affect dissemination.