ABSTRACT
The increasing incidence of tuberculosis (TB) is a major concern to public health policy-makers. To assess knowledge about TB and the DOTS strategy among medical students in a high incidence area of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a questionnaire designed around the national TB programme guidelines was given to 80 interns in Golestan and Mazandaran medical schools in December 2007. The overall mean knowledge score was 1.80 (SD 1.61) items correct out of 15. Knowledge about diagnosis, treatment and monitoring was especially poor. There were no significant differences between the knowledge of interns who had completed their internships in the infectious diseases or community health departments compared with those who had not.
ABSTRACT
The increasing incidence of tuberculosis [TB] is a major concern to public health policy-makers. To assess knowledge about TB and the DOTS strategy among medical students in a high incidence area of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a questionnaire designed around the national TB programme guidelines was given to 80 interns in Golestan and Mazandaran medical schools in December 2007. The overall mean knowledge score was 1.80 [SD 1.61] items correct out of 15. Knowledge about diagnosis, treatment and monitoring was especially poor. There were no significant differences between the knowledge of interns who had completed their internships in the infectious diseases or community health departments compared with those who had not
Subject(s)
Knowledge , Internship and Residency , Surveys and Questionnaires , Cross-Sectional Studies , TuberculosisABSTRACT
A single-drop liquid-liquid-liquid microextraction (LLLME) method coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was developed for the determination of fentanyl in biological (plasma and urine) and wastewater samples. Fentanyl is a potent synthetic narcotic analgesic administered in the form of a transdermal patch for the management of chronic pain. Fentanyl was extracted from 0.01 M NaOH solution (donor phase) into a thin layer of organic phase (100 muL), then back-extracted into 5 muL of the acidic acceptor microdrop (1 x 10(-3)M HClO(4)) immersed in the organic membrane from the tip of a 25-muL HPLC syringe. After the extraction, the microdrop was withdrawn into the syringe and injected directly into a HPLC system for analysis. The parameters influencing the extraction efficiency including the organic solvent and its volume, acceptor microdrop volume, composition of the donor and acceptor phases, stirring rate, temperature, salt addition and pre- and back-extraction times were investigated and optimized. At the most appropriate conditions (100 muL of n-octane, 3.6 mL of the donor phase maintained at 0.01 M NaOH, 5 muL of 1 x 10(-3)M HClO(4) as the acceptor microdrop, stirring rate of 1000 rpm for pre-extraction and 700 rpm for back-extraction, 30 degrees C, no salt addition, 30 min for pre-extraction and 20 min for back-extraction), an enrichment factor (EF) of 355 was obtained. The limit of detection (LOD) was 0.1 ngmL(-1) (based on S/N=3) and intra- and inter-day relative standard deviations less than 9% were obtained. The calibration graph was linear within the range of 0.5-1000 ngmL(-1) with the correlation coefficient (r) of 0.9999. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed method was evaluated by extraction and determination of fentanyl in plasma, urine and wastewater samples and satisfactory results were obtained.
