Background Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) is essential during the first six months of life and confers countless benefits to mothers and infants. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a smartphone-based educational intervention to improve new mothers’ breastfeeding for infants younger than six months of age in Urmia, Iran. Methods A randomized controlled trial study was conducted from January to December 2019 with 40 new mothers and their first child aged < 3 months, assigned to the intervention (mobile app education + routine care) and control groups (routine care). The mean age of infants was 1.25 and 0.98 months for each group consequently. The designed app content categorized according to seven sections (the importance of breastfeeding, behavioral methods, complementary feeding and EBF, pumping and manual expression, managing common breast-related and breastfeeding problems, breastfeeding tips in special situations, and common queries) for educating the required knowledge to nursing mothers. Results Forty mothers were assessed for primary outcomes in each group. At three months, the mothers’ knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) had meaningful differences in the intervention group compared to the control group. In the intervention group, the degree of changes in knowledge and attitude were 5.67 ± 0.94 and 8.75 ± 1.37 respectively more than the control group (p < 0.001, p < 0.001). However, this amount for the practice score was 0.8 ± 0.49 which is considered to be marginally significant (p = 0.063). During the study, the mothers’ breastfeeding self-efficacy showed significant progress in favor of the intervention group. The score enhancement was 26.85 ± 7.13 for the intervention group and only 0.40 ± 5.17 for the control group that was confirmed to be significant (p < 0.001). Conclusion The smartphone-based app for educating new mothers on breastfeeding had a significantly positive effect on breastfeeding self-efficacy and maternal KAP. In future studies, the intervention can be tested in both prenatal and postpartum periods.

Medical diagnostic X-rays are the largest manmade source of ionizing radiation received by the members of the general public. The aim of this study was to evaluate the radiographic reject/repeat rate and also to determine dose to the patients from radiographic rejects/repeats in radiology centers of Urmia University of Medical Sciences. During a 4 month period the most frequently examinations were chosen in three radiology centers. A form was designed as a reject/repeat analysis form for radiographers to complete each time a film was rejected by radiologists or repeated. The collected data were compiled at the end of each week and entered into a computer for analysis at the end of study. The results of this study showed that highest and lowest repetition rates were for pelvis, 14.01% and upper limb, 4.17%, respectively. The main reasons of repetition of radiographs were due to exposure (54%) and positioning (18%) errors. The average repeat rate in all three hospitals was 7.20%. It was found that human error has important role to repetition of radiographs. It is demonstrated that those patients having repeated radiographs received an average of 3.23 Gy·cm². Based on the findings of this study it must be remembered that the highest repetition rate was for pelvis. Considering the radiosensitive organs related to pelvis especially in pediatric patients some special considerations must be applied for pelvis examinations

As regards, the selection of appropriate energy in radiotherapy tumors that are placed in non-homogen areas is important, so the aim of the present study is evaluating the effect of 6 and 15MV photon beam energies on dose distribution in 3D-CRT for lower esophageal and rectal cancers. 12 patients with lower esophageal cancer and 12 patients with rectal cancer respectively, with the prescription dose of 7000 cGy and 5040 cGy were studied. For treatment of esophagus the three-field technique and for treatment of rectum the four-field technique was used. In the thoracic area, the spinal cord and in the pelvis, the bladder and head of femurs were considered as OARs. For comparing the results, all parameters used for treatment planning except the photon beam energy were kept constant. After performing the treatment planning with two different energies in each region, the received dose rate of spinal cord, bladder and head of femurs as OARs and dose distribution in PTVs were studied. The results of this study showed that the difference between doses received by OARs in 6MV and 15MV therapeutic plans, resulted 5.2, 5.06 and -9.14%, respectively. Also the PTVs received dose difference of esophagus and rectum in the performed therapeutic plans with energy of 6 MV than energy of 15MV is 1.52 and -0.63%, respectively. We found that using of low energy photons in lower esophageal treatment and high energy photons in the rectal treatment provides the better dose coverage. Finally, with such as therapeutic plans the cumulative dose of organs at risk will be reduced.

It was found that dose distributions calculated using both the multiple-source models and the phase-space data agree within 1.3%, demonstrating that the models can be used for dosimetry research purposes and dose calculations in radiotherapy.