Clinical accuracy and agreement between tympanic and forehead body temperature measurements for screening of patients with COVID-19.

AIM: To investigate the accuracy, reliability and agreement between infrared forehead thermometers versus infrared tympanic thermometers temperature, a cross-sectional study was conducted in April 2020. METHODS: The forehead and tympanic temperatures of 615 subjects were measured simultaneously in three exposed SARS-COV-2 groups at one hospital in Iran, during April 2020. These comparisons were evaluated by Bland-Altman Plot, repeatability, Passing-Bablok regression and Lin's concordance correlation coefficient. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was done to describe the discrimination accuracy of a diagnostic test. The study adhered to STROBE checklist for cross-sectional studies. RESULTS: A Bland-Altman plot indicated that the limits of agreement between the forehead and tympanic temperature were -0.259 to +0.19°C. Passing-Bablok regression analysis illustrated that the infrared forehead was not linearly related to tympanic temperatures (reference method), with a slope estimate that was significantly different from 1.00. The infrared forehead thermometer showed poor precision and lower accuracy than the tympanic. The forehead temperature readings had 60.0% sensitivity and 44.4% specificity (p > .05) to predict disease. CONCLUSION: According to the results of study, there is no evidence that the assessment of temperature by infrared forehead thermometer could discriminate between the two groups (positive and negative).

Psychometric Evaluation of Persian Version of Nurses' Intention to Care Scale (P-NICS) for Patients with COVID-19.

BACKGROUND: Given the high incidence of coronavirus and the shortage of nurses in Iranian hospitals, nurses' intention to care for patients with COVID-19 is important. The aim of this study is to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Persian version of the nurses' intention to care scale (NICS) by Iranian nurses who care for patients with COVID-19 in hospitals. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted on nurses (n= 400) at public and private Mazandaran hospitals. An online questionnaire was used that consisted of two parts: demographic variables and NICS. The scale was translated into Persian first and then validated using both construct and content validity. RESULTS: The findings from an exploratory factor analysis yielded six factors that explained 53.12% of the total variance of the NICS. The confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that the model had a good fit and the inter-item correlation values of the factors indicated good internal consistency. CONCLUSION: The Persian version of NICS in Iranian nurses had six factors. The results of our study add insight for nurse administrators and educators to further develop strategies to increase nurses' intention by improving positive attitudes and reducing their negative beliefs.

PLGA micro and nanoparticles in delivery of peptides and proteins; problems and approaches.

During the last decades, many of the poorly controlled diseases were treated using newly developed peptide and proteins. Although the majority of such therapeutic moieties have undesirable pharmacokinetic properties and there is still need for administration in relatively short intervals, new formulation strategies allow us to select appropriate carriers in the development of these compounds. Polyesters such as polylactide-co-glycolide were used to stabilize and control the release rate of peptide and proteins. Besides many appropriate characteristics, these polymers, however, have some limitations and drawbacks which limit their extensive use in formulation. In this review, the factors affecting the loading, release behavior, particle size distribution and burst effect were evaluated and appropriate suggestions to optimize the formulation with these polymers were proposed.