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Introduction: Accreditation is an evaluating tool of health care systems especially in hospitals: Iran’s Ministry of Health emphasizes its importance. We attempted this descriptive study to classify medication management criteria of hospital accreditation standards using a hybrid approach of fuzzy DEMATEL based on ANP (FDANP). Methods: This study included all Iran’s hospitals. Nine medication management criteria and their sub-criteria were evaluated. AHP questionnaire was used for data collection. Results: The following were demonstrated to be effective: The standards of safe storage of drugs and medical equipment, and providing practical procedure for reporting and controlling medication errors. The other factors were affected by them: Continuous monitoring of drugs and medical equipment utilization was the most affected and not independent factors/standards. Conclusion: Focus should be made on effective standards and their related measures, not on standards affected by other factors/standards.

Background: The main goal of the present study was to evaluate the effect of topical mastic oil, compared to placebo on treatment of functional dyspepsia (FD). Materials and Methods: Sixty-three patients with FD were included. Thirty-two subjects received the topical mastic oil (10 drops/TDS after meal) with massage and 31 patients received topical sesame oil with massage. Both groups received pantoprazole (40 mg daily) along with oil and massage. The severity of early satiation, postprandial fullness, epigastric pain and epigastric burning was assessed after 4 weeks using the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) as well as frequency of symptoms. Satisfaction with the treatment was also assessed using a researcher-made questionnaire. Changes in the severity of symptoms were evaluated by Friedman’s test. Results: Mean and standard deviation of age of the subjects were equal to 36.95±13.64 and 50 (79.4%) patients were female. Both groups experienced a significant decrease in the severity of all the four symptoms (P<0.001). The percentage of decrease in the severity of early satiation was significantly higher in the mastic group than the control group (76.03±34.91% vs. 37.24±38.86%, P=0.003). No significant differences were found in the percentage of decrease in the severity of postprandial fullness, epigastric pain and burning between the study groups (P=0.05, 0.06, and 0.13, respectively). The frequency of symptoms was decreased similarly in both groups. Satisfaction with the treatment was reported to be significantly higher in the mastic group than the sesame group (P=0.01). There were no intolerable side effects in both groups. Conclusion: Mastic oil reduced early satiation better than the placebo. In addition, satisfaction with the treatment was higher in the mastic group than the sesame group. [GMJ.2021;10:e1965]

Introduction Community acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a prevalent low respiratory infection. Diagnosis is based on clinical symptoms, radiologic evidence and culture. Biomarkers such as IL6, CRP and procalcitonin are helpful in diagnosis. Procalcitonin is a soluble biomarker in serum that increase in systemic inflammation and bacterial infections. People with normal procalcitonin have low risk to infect pneumonia. Patient with CAP have more oxidative stress than normal people. Studies show that receiving vitamin C can reduce incidence of pneumonia. The present study was designed to evaluate the effect of vitamin C supplement on procalcitonin biomarker in patient with CAP. Methods Patients with CAP who passed inclusion and exclusion criteria after obtaining informed consent, were assigned randomly in two groups of drug and placebo. The drug group received vitamin C (1000 mg/d) daily and medications that physician prescribed for treating CAP for 10 days and placebo group received placebo and medications that physician prescribed. The serum level of procalcitonin was measured at the beginning of the study and after 10 days of intervention. Results 35 patients finished the study. Serum level of procalcitonin on the first and tenth day did not show any significant difference between drug and placebo groups. Conclusions To clarify the relationship between the effects of vitamin C on procalcitonin in CAP, a larger sample size is required.