Age- and sex-specific pediatric LMS-Percentiles for Laboratory Parameters enabled by Data mining

Background:Various laboratory parameters routinely measured in pediatric practice covariate with sex and age. Conventional reference intervals are not suitable to account for this variation. Here we demonstrate construction of continuous LMS percentile curves from routine laboratory data. This allows adequate adjustment for both sex- and age-dependent covariation in childhood.Material and Methods:Anonymized routine blood test results requested by primary health care physicians were collected, outliers excluded and LMS-models generated in R.Results:Percentiles for several biomarkers derived from a regional population were established in the 'LMS' framework and provided here for comparison with etablished reference ranges, discussion and, potentially, clinical use.Conclusion: The reference framework 'LMS' is well-known from pediatric growth charts and can also be used in laboratory medicine.

PERCEPTIONS, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICES TOWARD ELDERLY DEPRESSION AMONG PRIMARY HEALTH CARE PHYSICIANS, RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA 2021

Background: Elderly people need care services in particular to maintain a high quality of life and health status. Managing the health needs of geriatric patients is part of the continuity of care family physicians provide to their patients. Aims: to assess physicians attitude, perception and practice toward depression in elderly in primary care sitting. Methodology: A cross- sectional study to assess primary health care physicians attitude and perceptions and practices toward depression in elderly patients in primary health care centers of King Saud medical city in Riyadh, kingdom of Saudi Arabia using self-administrated questionnaire Results: We received 210 responses to our questionnaire with response rate of 100 % where 51 % of them were females. Furthermore, 37 % of them have experience in PHC less than 5 years while 32 % have experience for more than 10 years. PHC physicians routinely screen for sleep disturbance (79 %), loss of interest or pleasure (79 %), sad mood (72 %), and decreased energy (63 %) in order to diagnosis of depression. Moreover, we found that 56 % of physicians would use clinical guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of geriatric depression where PHQ-9 was the most reported used tool (28 %) followed by geriatric depression scales (24%). Moreover, 71 % of physicians would refer patients with depression to psychiatry and 65 % to CBT instead to prescribe medications including SNRI (29 %), TCA (17 %) and SSRI (2 %). Moreover, the main barriers to adequate diagnosis and treatment of elderly depressed patients were rejection of patients to treatment (22 % of them indicated it as major problem) and difficulty for access to mental health care in our community (19 % of them indicated it as major problem). Conclusion: we found that most of physicians in Riyadh show high positive attitude toward depression of elderly however, there is some limitations in knowledge about symptoms of depression and restriction to guideline. Main barriers to adequate diagnosis and treatment of elderly depressed patients were rejection of patients to treatment and difficulty for access to mental health care in our community.

Nutritional Knowledge and Awareness of Primary Health Care Physicians Working in Hail Region, Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Study

Nutrition and its awareness play an important role in medical education for the management, as well as in the treatment of various chronic illnesses. Moreover, it always has been a concern about the knowledge and awareness of nutrition among physicians. Therefore, we aimed to study the nutritional knowledge, as well as awareness of primary health care physicians (PHC) working in Hail City, Saudi Arabia. A questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey was conducted among PHC physicians working in Hail, Saudi Arabia from September 2019 to December 2019. The questionnaire was distributed to PHC physicians and responses were recorded and data were statistically analyzed by applying Chi-square tests using SPSS 21.0. Questionnaires were circulated to 124 physicians, participated in this study. However, out of 124 physicians only 41 physicians filled out the complete questionnaire, indicating a very poor response rate (33%). The mean percentage of correct answers was 71.56%. Physicians who described their knowledge as “good” were found to be 75%. Furthermore, physicians working in PHC centers were aware of the basic nutritional knowledge regarding food content, pregnancy, lactation, diabetes, hypertension, etc. Our assessment revealed that physicians working in PHC of Hail Region had average nutritional knowledge. Moreover, it was also found that addition of various nutrition related educational programs in medical schools and hospital premises would improve the knowledge and awareness among the physicians.

Knowledge, attitudes, and practices of primary health care physicians, junior doctors, and medical college students towards autism in Duhok, Iraq

Background and objective: The knowledge of autism spectrum disorder among physicians and medical students is limited. This study aimed to find out the level of knowledge, attitudes, and practices of primary health care physicians, junior doctors, and 6th year medical college students in Duhok province, Iraqi Kurdistan toward autism spectrum disorder. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out from September 10th until October 30th, 2016. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. Two hundred and two questionnaires were completed by the three participants’ groups. Data analysis was carried out using the statistical analysis system (SAS, version 9.4). Results: Of the 202 participants, 24.8% were sixth year medical students, others were junior doctors (35.6%) and primary health care physicians (39.6%). Of them, 51.5% were females and 48.5% were males. High percentages (90.1% and 91.1%) of respondents heard and knew about autism spectrum disorder, respectively. They showed poor information on identification and management. Primary health care physicians had more knowledge on the genetic basis of autism (P <0.001) and behavioral therapy for autism (P = 0.016). No significant differences in knowledge was found between both gender groups except that female participants had limited knowledge on its genetic basis (P = 0.007). Conclusion: Although primary health care physicians, rotators, and medical students generally heard about autism spectrum disorder, they had limited knowledge of its diagnosis and management. It is recommended to introduce autistic disorders lectures to the medical college curriculum and training of physicians by experienced professionals. Keywords: KAP; Physicians; Medical students; Autism.