This study confirms that a blending of traditional Chinese medicine and a Western activities program would be useful in elderly care and that in-service training for formal caregivers in the use of these interventions would be beneficial for patients

BackgroundOne of the most common symptoms observed in patients with dementia is agitation, and several non-pharmacological treatments have been used to control this symptom. However, because of limitations in research design, the benefit of non-pharmacological treatments has only been demonstrated in certain cases. The purpose of this study was to compare aroma-acupressure and aromatherapy with respect to their effects on agitation in patients with dementia.MethodsIn this experimental study, the participants were randomly assigned to three groups: 56 patients were included in the aroma-acupressure group, 73 patients in the aromatherapy group, and 57 patients in the control group who received daily routine as usual without intervention. The Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory (CMAI) scale and the heart rate variability (HRV) index were used to assess differences in agitation. The CMAI was used in the pre-test, post-test and post-three-week test, and the HRV was used in the pre-test, the post-test and the post-three-week test as well as every week during the four-week interventions.ResultsThe CMAI scores were significantly lower in the aroma-acupressure and aromatherapy groups compared with the control group in the post-test and post-three-week assessments. Sympathetic nervous activity was significantly lower in the fourth week in the aroma-acupressure group and in the second week in the aromatherapy group, whereas parasympathetic nervous activity increased from the second week to the fourth week in the aroma-acupressure group and in the fourth week in the aromatherapy group.ConclusionsAroma-acupressure had a greater effect than aromatherapy on agitation in patients with dementia. However, agitation was improved in both of the groups, which allowed the patients with dementia to become more relaxed. Future studies should continue to assess the benefits of aroma-acupressure and aromatherapy for the treatment of agitation in dementia patients.Trial registrationChiCTR-TRC-14004810; Date of registration: 2014/6/12

Conducting the acupressure treatment takes 15 minutes. It could provide caregivers with a viable alternative to deal with patients with dementia.

BackgroundPain management has been considered as significant contributor to broad quality-of-life improvement for cancer patients. Modulating serum cholesterol levels affects analgesia abilities of opioids, important pain killer for cancer patients, in mice system. Thus the correlation between opioids usages and cholesterol levels were investigated in human patients with lung cancer.MethodsMedical records of 282 patients were selected with following criteria, 1) signed inform consent, 2) full medical records on total serum cholesterol levels and opioid administration, 3) opioid-naïve, 4) not received/receiving cancer-related or cholesterol lowering treatment, 5) pain level at level 5–8. The patients were divided into different groups basing on their gender and cholesterol levels. Since different opioids, morphine, oxycodone, and fentanyl, were all administrated at fixed low dose initially and increased gradually only if pain was not controlled, the percentages of patients in each group who did not respond to the initial doses of opioids and required higher doses for pain management were determined and compared.ResultsPatients with relative low cholesterol levels have larger percentage (11 out of 28 in female and 31 out of 71 in male) to not respond to the initial dose of opioids than those with high cholesterol levels (0 out of 258 in female and 8 out of 74 in male). Similar differences were obtained when patients with different opioids were analyzed separately. After converting the doses of different opioids to equivalent doses of oxycodone, significant correlation between opioid usages and cholesterol levels was also observed.ConclusionsTherefore, more attention should be taken to those cancer patients with low cholesterol levels because they may require higher doses of opioids as pain killer.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12944-016-0212-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

the annual shortage of special education teachers (SETs) across the United States poses staffing challenges for local school districts (U.S. Department of Education, 2015a) and the education of nearly 6.5 million children with disabilities (U.S. Department of Education, 2015b). However, efforts to improve the supply of SETs often overlook key concerns about the diversity and distribution of SETs across schools. In special education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; 2004), students of color represent nearly half of 6-to 21-year-olds enrolled in classrooms (Snyder & Dillow, 2015), yet teachers of color represent only 17% of SETs (Schools and Staffing Survey, 2011). 1 These trends have led some to argue that cultural mismatch between teachers and students may contribute to racial disparities in special education and poor academic outcomes for students with disabilities (Tyler, Yzquierdo, Lopez-Reyna, & Flippin, 2004). In acknowledging the needs of students of color who will make up more than half of the total student population by 2024, the U.S. Department of Education (2016b) recently released a report emphasizing the need for racial diversity in a profession that remains majority White. Yet despite current and past calls for recruiting more teachers of color overall (Patton, Williams, Floyd, & Cobb, 2003), there is little research on whether this has improved in special education. A concern closely related to students' access to racially diverse SETs is the availability of SETs with appropriate