Behaviours and opinions of adolescent students on smoking.

INTRODUCTION: Smoking is one of the major causes of preventable diseases, disability and death in the globe and Turkey. In our study, the knowledge of students about smoking addiction and which organ in the body is damaged due to smoking are aimed to be determined. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Surveys were applied to students of private university preparatory training center on the Anatolian side of Istanbul. In the conducted survey, the questions related with students' demographic characteristics, themselves, their families and friends smoking addiction, the reasons to start smoking, whether they want to quit smoking, whether they try to quit smoking and which of the organs that they know smoking is harmful were asked. The data obtained were transferred to the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows. RESULT: Out of 358 students who answered the survey completely, 152 students (42.4%) were male, 206 (57.6%) were female. Students were between the ages of 16-20 and the mean age was 18 ± 1.15. When asked about their smoking addiction, 84 (23.5%) of total actively continued to smoke. Total of 14 students (3.9%) smoked and then stopped smoking, 260 students (72.6%) have never smoked. Curiosity was the most commonly reported reason to start smoking (39%) and for the second row, they indicated to start smoking due to tobacco user friends (30.6%). CONCLUSIONS: More and more young people begin smoking at an earlier age and they transfer the problems of this bad addiction to the later years of their lives. There should be fight resolutely against actions and conditions encouraging smoking both as a state and society and in order to rescue young people from this bad addiction, it should continue to take steps which facilitate accessibility to supportive institutions.

Pulmonary tuberculosis incidence in Turkish prisons: importance of screening and case finding strategies.

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the burden of pulmonary tuberculosis in 10 prisons mostly located in the Marmara Region of Turkey, and to compare them with the country incidence. PATIENTS AND METHODS: All the inmates in ten prisons mostly located in the four cities in the Marmara Region of Turkey were enrolled in this study. Tuberculosis screening was done between January 2006-January 2007. Radiological screening for tuberculosis was performed by the mobile X-ray system and it was followed by bacteriological analysis of sputum for tuberculosis suspects. Four physicians evaluated the X-rays independently. RESULTS: Four thousand six hundred and fifteen prisoners were detected by radiological screening. Three hundred and one (7%) of them were female and 4314 (93%) were male, age range was between 14-72 years. Age ranges of female and male prisoners were 16-59 and 14-72 respectively. 398/4615 (8.6%) were young adults inmates with an age range of 14-18. Radiological abnormalities consistent with tuberculosis were found in 130 chest X-rays and followed by sputum bacteriology. Smear and culture positive pulmonary tuberculosis diagnosed in five out of 130, were all male with mean age 33 ± 10 years. Tuberculosis prevalence in the prisons was found to be 108/100.000 which was four times higher than the overall incidence of tuberculosis in Turkey in the year which the present study was conducted. CONCLUSION: Prisoners are one of the most important risk groups with high burden of tuberculosis in Turkey. This result highlights the need for adequate case- finding strategies in prisons.