Virtual and analytical self-expandable braided stent treatment models

The Flow Diverter is a self-expandable braided stent that has helped improve the effectiveness of cerebral aneurysm treatment during the last decade. The Flow Diverter's efficiency heavily relies on proper decision-making during the pre-operative phase, which is currently based on static measurements that fail to account for vessel or tissue deformation. In the context of providing realistic measurements, a biomechanical computational method is designed to aid physicians in predicting patient-specific treatment outcomes. The method integrates virtual and analytical treatment models, validated against experimental mechanical tests, and two patient treatment outcomes. In the case of both patients, deployed stent length was one of the validated result parameters, which displayed an error inferior to 1.5% for the virtual and analytical models. These results indicated both models' accuracy. However, the analytical model provided more accurate results with a 0.3% error while requiring a lower computational cost for length prediction. This computational method can offer designing and testing platforms for predicting possible intervention-related complications, patient-specific medical device designs, and pre-operative planning to automate interventional procedures.

Nurses' moral courage and related factors: A systematic review

BACKGROUND

Nurses face various ethical conflicts when taking care of patients, and such conflicts require moral courage. This systematic review was conducted with the aim of investigating moral courage and its related factors among nurses.

METHODS

To find related studies, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were followed. The PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus, Embase and Science Direct databases were searched using keywords such as Courage, Moral Courage, and Nurses, and no lower time limit was imposed when conducting the searches. The identified studies were published between January 2000 and March 2023. Quality of articles was assessed using the STROBE checklist.

RESULTS

The pooled sample size for the 19 included studies was 7863. All studies were observational and cross-sectional. The results showed that three categories of factors most related to moral courage are individual, moral, and factors related to the organization. Underlying factors of each category are also provided within this paper.

CONCLUSION

Moral courage is an integral part of nursing, which as a profession, is becoming even more challenging with the advancement of science and technology. Therefore, there is a need for nurses and especially nursing managers to be considerate of factors affecting moral courage of nurses, with a view to strengthening the positive factors and reducing the negative impacts.

Geographic variation in urinary tract and genital cancers in Iran: a hypothesis involving exposure to solar radiation

OBJECTIVE

Sunlight and vitamin D intake are considered as essential elements for human health. Insufficient intake of this vitamin is one of the causes of various cancers and some other diseases. The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between bladder, prostate, cervical and ovarian cancers with solar ultraviolet exposure in Iran. In this ecological study, data from 30 provinces were studied and analyzed by correlation and linear regression tests in SPSS software version 22. Physical activity, gender, human development index, lung cancer and altitude were adjusted at population level.

RESULTS

The incidence of bladder cancer in both sexes was inversely related to ultraviolet radiation, but it was significant only in men. Unlike bladder cancer, the incidence of cervical cancer showed a positive relation with ultraviolet radiation. No relation was found between the incidence of prostate and ovarian cancers with ultraviolet radiation. Among the adjusting variables, the incidence of lung cancer (surrogate for smoking) in women had the highest coefficient in the linear regression model.

Relationship between resilience and professional moral courage among nurses

Nurses need to be resilient to be able to endure their working conditions, and their moral courage can affect their resilience. This work aimed at studying the relationship between resilience and professional moral courage among nurses working in hospitals. This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 375 nurses working in teaching hospitals in the city of Ardabil in Iran in 2019. Data was collected using the following questionnaires: a demographic questionnaire, Sekerka et al. Moral Courage Scale and Davidson-Connor Resilience Scale. The reliability of the Davidson-Connor Resilience Scale, and Moral Courage Scale were found to be 89% and 85% using the test-retest method. The data were analyzed by Pearson correlation coefficient, t-test, variance analysis, and linear regression using the SPSS software version 24. In participating nurses, mean scores were 6.35±0.5 for total moral courage (favorable) and 79.35±0.35 (moderate) for resilience, respectively. A positive and significant relationship was observed between resilience and professional moral courage (P<0.05, r=0.1). Given the positive and significant relationship between resilience and professional moral courage, nurses require to have the high moral courage to enhance their resilience. Determining factors affecting moral courage and resilience, as well as finding strategies and creating an appropriate moral climate can increase nurses' morally courageous behaviors and resilience.

Sonolytic, sonocatalytic and sonophotocatalytic degradation of chitosan in the presence of TiO2 nanoparticles

The degradation of chitosan by means of ultrasound irradiation and its combination with heterogeneous (TiO(2)) was investigated. Emphasis was given on the effect of additives on degradation rate constants. Ultrasound irradiation (24 kHz) was provided by a sonicator, while an ultraviolet source of 16 W was used for UV irradiation. The extent of sonolytic degradation increased with increasing ultrasound power (in the range 30-90 W), while the presence of TiO(2) in the dark generally had little effect on degradation. On the other hand, TiO(2) sono-photocatalysis led to complete chitosan degradation in 60 min with increasing catalyst loading. TiO(2) sonophotocatalysis was always faster than the respective individual processes due to the enhanced formation of reactive radicals as well as the possible ultrasound-induced increase of the active surface area of the catalyst. The degraded chitosans were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), gel permeation chromatography (GPC) and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and average molecular weight of ultrasonicated chitosan was determined by measurements of relative viscosity of samples. The results show that the total degree of deacetylation (DD) of chitosan did not change after degradation and the decrease of molecular weight led to transformation of crystal structure. A negative order for the dependence of the reaction rate on total molar concentration of chitosan solution within the degradation process was suggested.