Parental Response to Children's Chronic Pain.

AIMS: The aim of this study was to describe the behavior of Moroccan parents toward their children's chronic pain. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in different hospital wards. Parents of hospitalized children with chronic pain aged six or over participated in the study. The parents' behavior toward their children's pain was assessed using an Arabic version of the Adult Responses to Children's Symptoms (ARCS) scale. The scores for each dimension were calculated by summing the responses of the items related to that dimension, and then they were normalized to obtain scores ranging from 0 to 100. The comparison of scores was performed using Student's t-test or ANOVA. The association between quantitative variables was assessed using a correlation coefficient. RESULTS: A total of 100 parents of children with chronic pain participated in the study. The children's average age was 10.0 ± 2.7 years. The majority of children (62%) experienced pain for more than six months. The joints were the most common location of pain (43%), followed by the abdomen (35%). The "Protect" and "Monitor" dimensions had good reliability with Cronbach's alpha coefficients of 0.80 and 0.69, respectively. The highest mean normalized scores were noted for the "Monitor" and "Protect" dimensions, with means of 82.1 and 70.8, respectively. The "Minimize" dimension had the lowest mean score of 41.4. Parental behavior was not linked to child- or pain-related characteristics. There was no difference in how mothers and fathers behaved towards their children's pain. CONCLUSION: Parents of children with chronic pain in Morocco scored higher on all dimensions of the ARCS, with the highest scores in the "protect" and "monitor" dimensions. These behaviors can negatively affect children's somatic symptoms, functional disability, and anxiety. Our study revealed the importance of providing support to both children and parents of children with chronic pain to manage the pain and related behaviors.

Women's Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Cervical Cancer Screening in Morocco.

High incidence rates of cervical cancer are still common in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with ineffective prevention policies. This study assessed Moroccan women's knowledge and practices regarding the cervical cancer screening program. A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2019 in four primary healthcare centers in Casablanca. Women over the age of 18 who came to these centers during the study period were invited to participate in the study. The variables collected were related to women's knowledge of cervical cancer, the screening program, and their reasons for not participating in the screening program. The main risk factors identified by the participants were multiple sexual partners (4.3%) and sexually transmitted diseases (4%). About 77% of the cases (95% confidence interval (CI): 72.1%; 80.4%) knew that a cervical cancer screening program exists in Morocco. However, a small proportion had an idea about the population targeted by the program (46%) and the recommended interval between two screening tests (20%). Only 28% (95% CI: 19.2%; 38.2%) of eligible women had ever been screened for cervical cancer. These results underline the importance of implementing a communication strategy to increase women's awareness of the cervical screening program and their involvement in it.

The adaptation of the Object and Action Naming Battery into Moroccan Arabic: Norms for name agreement, frequency, imageability, visual complexity, and age of acquisition.

INTRODUCTION: The ability to name pictures has been investigated widely in healthy people and clinical populations. The Object and Action Naming Battery (OANB) is widely used for psycholinguistic research, aphasia research, and clinical practice. Normative databases for pictorial stimuli have been conducted in language processing studies to control for various psycholinguistic variables known to affect the availability of picture names. The present study provides Moroccan Arabic norms for name agreement, familiarity, imageability, visual complexity, and age of acquisition for 100 line drawings of actions and 162 line drawings of objects taken from Druks and Masterson. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: 160 healthy Moroccan Arabic-speaking individuals participated in this study. Name agreement values for the OANB items were collected from forty subjects, followed by collecting data for the psycholinguistic variables: spoken-word frequency, imageability, visual complexity, and age of acquisition from 120 participants. RESULTS: The Moroccan Arabic OANB (MA-OANB) comprises 70 objects and 60 action pictures. 77% of the nouns and 68% of the verbs obtained 100% target responses. A minimum of 93 percent name agreement was reached for the remaining items. Norms were also collected for the following psycholinguistic variables: spoken-word frequency, imageability, age of acquisition, and visual complexity. CONCLUSION: The stimuli can be used for various psycholinguistic investigations and also for assessment and therapeutic purposes in Morocco.

Cross-cultural adaptation of the Moroccan version of the Mini-Mental State Examination: A preliminary study.

INTRODUCTION: The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) is widely used for dementia screening. The purpose of this study was twofold. First, to cross-culturally adapt the Moroccan Arabic version of MMSE (MA-MMSE) to screen dementia among literate and illiterate elderly Moroccans, and second to analyze its psychometric properties. METHODS: The MA-MMSE was administered to 80 elderly patients, 28 were females and 52 were males. Among all the participants, 22 showed evidence of dementia. Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC), internal consistency, and test-retest reliability were investigated. The test-retest reliability was assessed by Spearman correlation analysis. Cronbach's α coefficients for internal consistency between total scores and subscores of the test were calculated. RESULTS: Areas under the ROC curve in literate and illiterate elderly Moroccans participants corresponded to 0.932 and 0.936, respectively. The cutoff point of 21/22 on the MA-MMSE in literate elderly had the highest sensitivity (85.7%), specificity (94.7%), and a positive likelihood ratio of (16.29%), whereas the cutoff point of 18/19 of the screening test in illiterate elderly yielded the highest sensitivity (92.9%), specificity (95.0%), and a positive likelihood ratio of (18.57%). The Cronbach's α values of the MA-MMSE for literate and illiterate elderly Moroccans were higher than 0.7. Thirty subjects were randomly selected for participation in the test-retest protocol. Participants were retested after an interval of 4-6 weeks. The test-retest reliability for total scores was significant 0.78 (p < 0.01). CONCLUSION: The findings provide preliminary evidence that the MA-MMSE is a feasible instrument for dementia screening.

Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Validation of "Malocclusion Impact Questionnaire" into Moroccan Arabic.

INTRODUCTION: The malocclusion index questionnaire (MIQ) is widely used in research and clinical practice. To our knowledge, there are no studies of its use in Moroccan patients. AIM: The objective of this study was to translate and culturally adapt the malocclusion impact questionnaire (MIQ) into Moroccan Arabic and to assess its reliability and validity among a sample of young Moroccan teenagers. The PIDAQ was cross-culturally adapted into Malay version by forward- and backward-translation processes, followed by psychometric validation. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The MIQ was cross-culturally adapted into Moroccan Arabic by forward- and backward-translation processes, followed by psychometric validations. The MIQ was completed by a representative sample of 94 Moroccan adolescents aged 12-17 years selected randomly from five public schools of Casablanca. Internal consistency reliability was determined from Cronbach's alpha, and the intraclass coefficient of the item scores was obtained in 1 month in a subset of 30 subjects. Data were analyzed using the Statistical SPSS software, version 16.0, SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL, USA. RESULTS: The MIQ was completed twice by each participant at one-month interval to assess test reliability; the intraclass coefficient was r = 0.958, showing an excellent reproducibility. The internal consistency demonstrated the reliability of the questionnaire with Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.917. The validity of the questionnaire was assessed by evaluation of the relationship between the total scores of the MIQ and normative need for orthodontic treatment according to ICON. The questionnaire showed an insignificant correlation (0.129, p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The Moroccan Arabic version of the MIQ was found to be reliable, whereas it has unacceptable validity according to ICON, and hence, it is unlikely to be a useful measure in orthodontic clinical trials for Moroccan adolescents.

Motivational factors influencing career choices of Moroccan dental students.

This study aims to investigate the factors that motivate dental students to choose dentistry as a career. A questionnaire-based survey involving 752 dental students from the only two Moroccan dental schools was conducted between April and May 2011. The questionnaire was designed in terms of financial factors, human factors and working conditions factors. The students were asked to rank the career choices' set of questions on a five point Likert scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The internal reliability of the scale was investigated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and validity was investigated by a confirmatory principal component analysis. Results indicate that dentistry has a noble function; the "desire to help people" and "job opportunities" determines career choice among Moroccan dental students. Another result that emerged from the study is that men were motivated by working conditions factors (p=0.025) while women were motivated by human factors (p=0.001). In brief, the results of the present study can be used by health policy makers to persuade students to pursue dentistry as a career.

Prevalence of stress in Casablanca medical students: a cross-sectional study.

INTRODUCTION: Recently, an important literature data has reported that medical students experience stress more than students in other disciplines. In contrast, there is a significant shortage of the stress impact on the academic performance. The primary purpose of our study was to determine the prevalence of stress among Casablanca Medical students and to investigate if there is an association between stress and academic skills. METHODS: A total of 275 participants studying at Casablanca Medical School were included. The study was conducted using a self-administered, anonymous questionnaire, which included four subscales on academic skills perception (Academic competence, Test competence, Time management and Strategic study habits) and a Test Anxiety scale to assess the degree of stress related to exams among medical students. RESULTS: The overall findings showed that 52.7% of respondents were stressed by examinations, and the highest stress prevalence was among the fifth-year medical students. Measures of comparative stress degrees between male and female students did not show any statistical significant differences (p=0.34). Correlation analysis revealed negative association between stress and academic competence (-0.394), test competence (-0.426), time management (-0.240), strategic study (-0.183) respectively (p<0.001). CONCLUSION: Medical educators and psychologists have to increase clinical awareness of stress among medical students, by establishing strategies for stress management.

Craniomandibular disorders and mandibular reference position in orthodontic treatment.

The aim of this paper is to bring into focus the literature on the choice of the mandibular reference position in orthodontic treatment; of a particular reference to this paper is intercuspal position, centric relation position, or therapeutic position. To give a comprehensive account of the literature review on craniomandibular disorders (CMD), we have relied on books and articles using both Google Scholar and PubMed. Selection criteria included a combination of Mesh and type of article. Article classification was made by two authors, using the following structure outline: prevalence of craniomandibular disorders, its etiology and pathophysiology, occlusion and craniomandibular disorders, orthodontic treatment and CMD, and the mandibular reference position in orthodontics. An important conclusion that emerged from the present literature review is that CMD do not seem to be directly related to orthodontic treatment, and their appearance cannot be predicted or prevented by any means. Therefore, orthodontists must adopt a mandibular reference suitable to their patients and which best respects the balance existing in the stomatognathic system.