Rising geriatric population poses special challenges for 21st century health providers. The present study assessed the knowledge of medical students about health of the older adults and determinants in the development of attitude towards them, and career preference.
58 first and 35 fifth year medical students of Gulf Medical University, Ajman, were surveyed using self administered questionnaires (a) quiz on old people health and (b) relevant socio- demographic information, and career preference. Curriculum content was analyzed from student manual and through personal interviews with faculty and fresh graduates.
The present pilot study found significant improvement in medical students' knowledge on physical health by fifth year (P<0.005), but not on mental and social health. Parental attitude, childhood experience with older adults and religious education influenced most 75.3%, 55.9% and 60.2% respectively in the development of attitude towards older adults. 40% of the final year students reported an influence of medical education. Only 2% opted for a career among older adults. The geriatric health and aging topics were scattered in the curriculum and not as a comprehensive unit. Neither the faculty nor the graduates perceived that geriatric medicine was included in the curriculum.
The study emphasizes the importance of enhancing geriatric training and experience in undergraduate medical program.

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Thirty six patients of ulcerative colitis were included in a controlled study and the lung functions were evaluated among them. There was statistically significant (<0.010) reduction in maximum voluntary ventilation (MVV), Diffusing capacity (DLCo) was also reduced. Though the reduction in DLCo was not statistically significant, the importance of this finding as compared to the controls has been discussed. The findings are suggestive of subclinical restrictive ventilatory abnormality in ulcerative colitis.

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Traditional therapy for obstructive sleep apnea includes nightly use of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) and it has been the most common form of therapy for sleep apnea since 1981. In this study, we aimed to show that sleep stage percentage alteration is an indication of the severity of the disease and, impairment of the sleep stage percentage can be restored by CPAP treatment.
In our sleep laboratory we evaluated 63 obstructive sleep apnea patients, 14 women and 49 men, during a one-year period. Of these patients the youngest was 15 and the oldest was 71 years old and the mean of age was 44. Of these 33 had Respiratory Disturbance Index (RDI) greater than 20 and were administered CPAP therapy.
We compared some sleep parameters of these patients with and without CPAP treatment. These sleep parameters were: sleep stage percentage alteration, obstructive apnea count, the longest apnea duration, mean apnea duration and RDI. We found that obstructive apnea count is 133.06 before CPAP treatment and 26.43 with CPAP treatment. The longest apnea duration was measured as 64.87 seconds before CPAP treatment and 30.20 seconds with CPAP treatment. We measured the mean apnea duration as 19.83 seconds before CPAP treatment and 17.76 seconds with CPAP treatment. We also measured the RDI as 55.65 before CPAP and 16.04 with CPAP treatment.
According to our data, CPAP treatment corrects REM sleep percentage effectively although it does not correct completely. Our data also shows that obstructive apnea count and its reflection, RDI, were reduced significantly by CPAP treatment. In summary, our data confirm that CPAP therapy is effective in obstructive apnea patients by means of RDI reduction and sleep stage percentage correction.

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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is one of those groups of diseases whose peculiarity is demyelination of the white matter of the central nervous system. Ocular disorders are one of the most common manifestations of the disease. The present study was therefore done to evaluate ocular complications in multiple sclerosis.
This was a cross sectional observational study that included 50 multiple sclerosis patients referring to the ophthalmology and neurology clinics and departments affiliated to the Yazd, Medical Sciences University. All data was entered in a computer via SPSS software and analyzed by Chi-square and ANOVA statistical tests, thus results less than 0.05 was significant.
Of the total, 16 (32%) were men and 34(68%) were women. The most frequent complication in the population under study was optic neuritis that was present in 30 patients (60%), nystagmus was present in 14 cases (28 %) and diplopia in 9 cases (18%).
In the present study, optic neuritis was seen in 60 % (almost all cases with ocular pain and dischromatopsia), nystagmus in 28% and diplopia in 18% of the patients.

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Prolonged trans-laryngeal intubation is associated with increased laryngeal injury, glottic and sub-glottic stenosis, infectious complications, and tracheal injury such as tracheomalacia, and tracheal stenosis. Several studies assessing the laryngeal complications are available in Caucasoid populations. Minimal data are available in the literature related to Iran. In this study we have evaluated the etiological factors of laryngo-tracheal stenosis following intubation.
It was a prospective analytical study in Otolaryngology- Head and Neck Surgery Department, Ahwaz Jondishapour University of Medical Sciences, from 2004 until 2006 (19 months) in Ahwaz, Iran. Ninety eight patients (61 patients were male) who were intubated for more than 48 hours in Imam Khomeini, Golestan and Razi University Hospitals critical care unit with different causes and were referred to otolaryngology emergency ward with respiratory distress (The prevalent cause was head trauma) were enrolled in the study. All patients underwent laryngeal video endoscopy and laryngeal computed tomography scan at by an otolaryngologist surgeon who was blinded to the intubation variables.
Twenty five patients had been presented by laryngo-tracheal stenosis and the most common site of that was sub-glottic area (sixteen patients). Statistical analytic findings showed that from several factors such as tube size (P=0.088), skill of intubating doctor (consultant or registrar; P =0.146), duration of intubation (P=0.002) and emergency intubation (P = 0.240) only prolonged intubation (P=0.002) was associated with higher incidence of laryngo-tracheal stenosis.
In conclusion, laryngo-tracheal stenosis after prolonged endotracheal intubation was directly associated with duration of intubation. The most common site of laryngeal stenosis was sub-glottic area.

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