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Esophageal rupture presents a significant interprofessional challenge to the entire therapeutic team. The majority of symptoms are non-specific, which can significantly delay the time between perforation and final diagnosis. An esophageal rupture can be caused by a variety of pathophysiological factors. Instruments such as endoscope causes an elevation in the wall tension, particularly iatrogenic interventions, or a massive rise in intraluminal pressure caused by throwing up, chest injury, or abdominal injuries are the main stressors. The choice of the management plan and its outcome depends mainly on the site of the rupture. Although the perforation can occur at any site of the esophagus, there is a tendency to main areas that correspond to natural points of narrowing of the lumen. If esophageal rupture requires surgery, patients should be transported to the operating room as soon as feasible. Minor delays in surgical therapy can lead to higher rates of morbidity and fatality. This review aims to summarize current evidence on etiology, epidemiology, diagnosis, and surgical management of esophageal rupture.

Objective: To assess the attitude of non-psychiatric physicians in Saudi Arabia toward suicide prevention. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted over period from 1st February 2022 to 30 April 2022 among non-psychiatric physicians in Saudi Arabia. The target population was convenient sample of non-psychiatric physicians working in primary health care centers and hospitals in Saudi Arabia who accept to share in research. Only those who agreed were included and those who refuse were excluded from research, psychiatric physicians will be excluded too. Results: Study included 615 participants. The mean age among study participants was 29.64 + 6.94 years with median age of 27 years. Participants’ age ranged from 19 to 62 years. Male to female ratio was 1:1. Participants were asked about their highest academic qualification. The most frequent qualification was bachelor of medicine and surgery (n= 428, 69.6%). The median duration of working experience among study participants was 2 years and ranged from 1 to 37 years. The most frequent specialty among study participants was intern (n= 162, 26.3%) followed by resident (n= 159, 25.9%). The majority of study participants studied psychiatric during their undergraduate studies (n= 528, 85.9%). On the other hand, only 231 participants had a psychiatric training during internship (37.6%). There were 27.5% of study participants had a history of mental illness (n= 169). Furthermore, 36.7% of study participants had a family history of mental illness (n= 226). About one third of study participants had history of suicidal thoughts (n= 185, 30.1%). Participants’ median scores in attitudes to suicide prevention scale was 48 out of 70. It ranged from 22 to 69 reflecting low to high in attitude positivity. Participants’ responses to scale items were mostly strongly disagree reflecting a positive attitude toward suicide prevention. Conclusion: Participants scores about attitudes to suicide prevention scale was moderate. About one third of study participants had history of suicidal thoughts. These thought were more prevalent among widow participants, master degree participants and resident and general practitioner participants.

Patient safety is a global problem and one of the key elements of the quality of health care systems. The human factor is a major risk factor leading to medical errors that affect patient safety. To explore the impact of this factor on patient safety in the hospitals located in the Ha'il city in Saudi Arabia; the perceptions of nurses working in governmental hospitals were assessed using a self-structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were presented for the studied variables. Significant differences between the categories of the respondents’ characteristics in relation to risk factors were assessed using the Mann-Whitney test; the Kruskal-Wallis and the Spearman rank correlation test. Only 50% of the factors tested were perceived as moderate risk factors that were negatively affecting patient safety in Ha'il hospitals; namely: ‘Poor teamwork among medical staff’; ‘Unqualified medical staff’ and ‘Miscommunication among medical staff’. The substantial differences among demographic characteristics of the study sample in relation to the human resources risk factors causing medical errors was identified at P

Patient protection has become one of the key elements of the quality of health care systems in Saudi Arabia. Medical errors that threaten patient safety are mediated by several factors including system risk factors. Hence, we used a self-structured questionnaire to assess and rank the system factors according to the perceptions of nurses working in the hospitals of the ministry of health in Hail, KSA. Eight out of twelve factors tested were perceived as threatening factors of the patient safety that are; ‘Shortage of medical staff’, ‘Poor design of the hospital structure’, ‘Long working hours’, ‘Overcrowding of patients’, ‘Poor coordination between hospital departments, ‘Punitive and blaming environment, ‘Lack of clinical practice standards’ and, ‘Poor financial incentives’. Thus, considering the negative impact of the identified threatening system factors in this study on patient safety, urgent planning and managing appropriate corrective actions should be designed to improve patient safety issues.

Background There is a growing recognition of the importance of teaching patient safety to medical students to improve healthcare and minimize patients’ harm; however, few studies evaluated the attitudes of pharmacy students toward patient safety. The purpose of this study was to explore the attitudes toward patient safety among pharmacy students in Saudi Arabia. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted among pharmacy students from four different universities using a self-administered questionnaire. The Attitudes to Patient Safety Questionnaire III (APSQ-III) was used to measure the attitude toward patient safety. The data were presented using descriptive statistics, such as percentages and means, and compared across gender using Student’s t-test. Results All of the students who agreed to participate and signed the consent form have completed the questionnaire. Of the 347 pharmacy students who participated in the study; 63% were enrolled in the Doctor of Pharmacy Program and 37% were enrolled in the Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Sciences program. Only 46% of the participants received courses for patient safety mainly in the fourth year of their pharmacy program, and around 93% were interested to learn more about patient safety. A more positive attitude toward patient safety was reported in the domain of ‘confidence to report errors’, ‘working hours as error cause’, ‘patient involvement in reducing error’, and ‘team functioning’. However, most negative attitudes were reported in the domains of ‘Error inevitability’ and ‘Disclosure responsibility’. Gender differences were noticed in the attitude toward patient safety; female students had more positive attitudes in most domains of patient safety. Conclusions Around one-half of the surveyed pharmacy students did not receive any courses on patient safety. Our findings emphasize the need for including patient safety courses in the curricula of the different pharmacy programs given the patient safety training importance in improving the quality of patient care.

Medical terminology is the vocabulary used to describe the human body and its conditions; fluency in this language is essential for health care professionals. We examined the level of basic medical terminology understanding among 347 pharmacy students in four different colleges of pharmacy in Saudi Arabia using a newly developed test of 30 multiple choice questions. Students in the relatively new colleges of pharmacy were more likely to have a higher score in the medical terminology test compared to their counterparts from the old college of pharmacy (β = 1.23, 95% CI = 0.16–2.30, P-value = 0.02). Female gender (β = 1.72, 95% CI = 0.57–2.88, P-value = 0.003), and advanced class level (β = 0.84, 95% CI = 0.36–1.32, P-value

Autistic children want a lot of help cleaning their teeth and they have a higher risk of periodontal disorder and less caries than the general public. The study's purpose is to see how helpful manual and powered toothbrushing are for autistic kids aged 6-12 years.A total of 40 autistic children aged 6-12 years were chosen at random from Mangalore city schools. The simplified oral hygiene index was used to determine the baseline oral health (OHI-S). Children were split into two classes during an oral review. Children in Group 1 received a manual toothbrush, and those in Group 2 received a powered toothbrush. Many of the children were given Colgate fluoride-free toothpaste. Under the guidance of care professionals, children were taught to brush for 3 min. They were taught to count from 1 to 20 when brushing each buccal and lingual section. The index was rechecked at the conclusion of the 1In Group 1, a statistically significant reduction in mean OHI-S scores was observed in baseline versus 30 days and baseline versus 90 days, while in Group 2, a statistically highly significant reduction in baseline versus 30 days, baseline versus 90 days, and 30 days versus 90 days was observed.Furthermore, in autism children, powered teeth brushing shows potential. Long-term follow-up and greater sample size are, however, needed.

The COVID-19 disease has spread worldwide since 2020, causing a high number of deaths as well as infections, and impacting economic, social and health systems. Understanding its dynamics may facilitate a better understanding of its behavior, reducing the impact of similar diseases in the future. Classical modeling techniques have failed in predicting the behavior of this disease, since they have been unable to capture hidden features in the data collected about the disease. The present research benefits from the high capacity of modern computers and new trends in artificial intelligence (AI), specifically three deep learning (DL) neural networks: recurrent neural network (RNN), gated recurrent unit (GRU), and long short-term memory (LSTM). We thus modelled daily new infections of COVID-19 in four countries (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, and India) that vary in their climates, cultures, populations, and health systems. The results show that a simple-structure RNN algorithm is better at predicting daily new infections and that DL techniques have promising potential in disease modeling and can be used efficiently even in the case of limited datasets.

In this paper, a time-varying convex optimization-based consensus controller is utilized for the secondary control of Microgrid in islanded mode. During this mode, grid-forming units are responsible for controlling the frequency and voltage of the microgid. Hierarchical control structure based on droop control is utilized to provide these functionalities. In primary control level, the system stability is maintained through supplying required active and reactive power leaving a deviation in the frequency and voltage magnitudes. The secondary control level is introduced to restore the frequency and voltage to their nominal values. However, droop-based hierarchal control suffers from poor reactive power sharing due to voltage drop in the lines. The proposed controller aims to restore the frequency to its nominal value and voltage within a predefined limit while keeping the active and reactive power sharing difference between units to the minimum. The proposed controller employs consensus-based distributed communication where each unit only communicates with its neighbor. This paper provides optimality and consensus analysis of time-varying optimization-based consensus control as well as a design procedure of the controller. The proposed controller is validated through SIMULINK/ MATLAB simulation. The real-time convex optimization solver is provided by CVXGEN.

In this paper, we present a distributed averaging optimization-based controller for secondary control of islanded microgrid. In islanded mode, grid-forming units collaborate to maintain the voltage and frequency of the microgrid through droop control. However, traditional droop control suffers from poor reactive power sharing due to voltage drop in the lines. Therefore, secondary control interferes to improve power sharing in addition to restore the voltage and frequency errors produced by droop control. The proposed controller seeks minimum inconsistency of power sharing among units while keeping the frequency at its nominal value and the terminal voltage within allowable tolerance i.e. ±5% of its nominal value. The active and reactive power sharing are communicated through low frequency peer-to-peer communication channel and the average value is calculated locally. A convex optimization function is utilized to minimize the difference of power sharing among grid-forming units. The optimization function is implemented using CVX/CVXGEN and embedded in the control system in real-time on a discrete basis over a time horizon of one second. The controller is validated through simulation using MATLAB/SIMULINK. In addition, plug-and-play capability is tested for the proposed controller.

Recently, the usage of social media platforms, especially Twitter, for sharing views and experiences toward different products and services among users has increased significantly. Accordingly, extracting and analyzing Twitter data has generated great interest from sentiment analysis researchers. Moreover, we noted the high-accuracy results achieved by the deep learning approach compared to the machine learning approach especially in analyzing a massive amounts of social networks data. In this paper, we present a survey about previous studies on sentiment analysis that used the machine learning, lexicon-based and deep learning approaches on Arabic and English tweets. Moreover, we report results based on both, machine learning and deep learning sentiment analysis approaches on Arabic tweets to extract customers' sentiments of the Saudi telecommunication companies. We also evaluate the impact of using Part of Speech (POS) model and Word Embedding on the performance of deep learning techniques. Logistic Regression (LR), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) have been utilized to detect the sentiment orientation for a dataset consist of 1098 tweets. Results suggest that deep learning technique with Word Embedding method was promising in terms of accuracy (F1=0.81). Moreover, the results show that applying LR, SVM, and RF using unigram language model is significantly better than using the bigram language representation.

In the last few years, Twitter becomes the most popular platform for individuals to share their experiences and viewpoints towards different products and services. Therefore, it attracts a lot of researchers to use it as a body for sentiment analysis and opinion mining research studies. Most of the previous research studies in this area have been using the traditional machine learning-based and lexicon-based approaches more compared to the deep learning approach to classify the emotional states of English tweets. Also, there is a shortage of research studies that categorize the opinion orientations of tweets in other languages such as Arabic. Recently, deep learning approach has achieved remarkable results over the traditional machine learning algorithms in analyzing a massive amount of data as the case with social networks data. In this research study, we seek to discuss the state-of-the-art of sentiment analysis methodologies used to classify tweets' sentiment orientation and challenges that need to be addressed. Also, this paper provides an overview of deep learning approach and question if this approach can be adopted to improve the classification accuracy of sentiment analysis for both English and Arabic tweets.

Many technologies, such as irrigation scheduling, advanced irrigation systems, limited irrigation methods, soil moisture management, wastewater irrigation, can be used to reduce the problems attributed to date palm irrigation. Improvement of water management is required at all levels of irrigation including planning and design, project implementation, and operation and maintenance. This chapter provides information to determine the monthly and annual water requirements by date palm in eight different regions of Saudi Arabia that help improve irrigation water management. Areas selected for this study are located in regions of the Medina (Al Ula), Tabuk (Teimaa), Makkah (Al Jumum), Al Jouf (Sakakah), Riyadh (Sodos), Qassim (Riyad Al Khabra, Hail (AL Kaedh), and East Region (Al Ahsa). Irrigation water requirements (m3/ha) after taking into account the proportion of cultivated area of date palm for each year were found to be 9495.24, 7340.18, 7298.93, 8913.59, 8614.96, 8568.68, 7996.99, 8510.72 m3/ha, respectively, per 100 Date Palm trees/ha. The annual total irrigation water requirements (m3/tree) in these regions is 95, 73.4, 73, 89, 86, 85.7, 80, 85 m3, respectively as the radius of shaded area per tree is 3.5 m. The decrease of the crop water requirement (CRW) in all sites of study to around 8000 m3/ha from previously reported by many researchers is mainly attributed to percentage of shaded area of date palm tree. Therefore, it is recommended that the practice of a distance between trees to 10 m × 10 m should be changed to 7 m × 7 m in order to reduce the estimation of CRW of date palm trees.

In a strive to reduce the domestic reliance on oil, Saudi Arabia continues to sustain and increase it is production of naturel gas by drilling and stimulating new gas wells in Gahwar field. The newly drilled wells by default will not have the required permanent surface equipment to flow the free gas and condensate to the gas plant during the testing process of the productivity of the well. This testing process may extend for days, particularly when the well undergoes fracturing stimulations where hundreds of barrels of stimulation fluids are pumped into the formation in high pressures to create artificial fractures into the pay zone to enhance the well productivity. Such operations require extended flowback periods to clean up the well in order to reach the required production fluid criteria. This paper will focus on the first successful application of the spoolable reinforced thermoplastic pipe (RTP) in Saudi Arabia gas field. A 10,500 ft of 4" high pressure-high temperature RTP line was temporarily spooled and connected from a newly stimulated well to a flowline of a pre exiting well which allowed to flow back a significant amounts of free gas and condensate to the gas plant. Testing separators were utilized during the flowback operation to insure a low water cut production to the gas plant. Challenges like large operating area, high H2s content, nearby oil and gas wells, the installation and dismantle process of the RTP line after completing the operation were faced and resolved during the implementation of this technology. Utilizing RTP during the testing period of the well saved the environment from unnecessary emissions of heat-trapping gases and is proven to be economically beneficial. However, it may not be possible to implement it in every well due to safety and geographical reasons.

Two experiments were conducted in a camel cheese study to (i) compare camel cheese to bovine cheese made from bovine milk standardised to simulate camel milk, and (ii) describe the technology for manufacture of dry (SCC-D) and brine-salted soft camel cheese (SCC-B). Comparable cheese yield (camel: 7.4 ± 0.15, cow: 7.3 ± 0.55 kg/100 kg of milk) and levels of dry matter loss in whey were observed. Clotting time was 234 s for both cheeses which were made using thermophillic starters. Cheese yield was 9.31 ± 0.64 kg/100 kg with 425.6 ± 38.2 g/kg cheese dry matter for SCC-D and 8.22 ± 0.90 kg/100 kg with 469 ± 73.8 g/kg dry matter for SCC-B.

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA Background: Obesity is a global world-wide health problem in both developing and developed countries. In Saudi Arabia, this problem becomes an alarming disease both during childhood and adulthood among males and females. Primary health care physicians are identified as the first line of defense and contributor to cost-effective for the management and prevention of the disease; they are expected to normalize the weights in the community.        Objective: The aim of this study was to determine attitudes and practice by physician working in primary health care centers regarding management of obesity in the cities of Dammam and Al-Khobar in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Methods: This study is a cross-sectional study that took place from December 2009 to March 2010.  A specially made questionnaire with a Cronbach alpha reliability of 0.86 and content validity by 5 experts was used to measure the attitudes and practices from several different aspects of care provided at primary health care centers to obesity were distributed and collected from 76 physicians working in primary health centers in Dammam and 73 in Al-Khobar in Saudi Arabia. One hundred thirty physicians responded (12.8% non-response rate) and became the sample. Results: Eighty-three per cent of physicians has negative attitude toward the concept of obesity, and more than two-thirds of primary care physicians see themselves play a key role in the management of obesity; The mean attitude scores of studied nurses was ranged from2.95±1.06 to 4.34 ±0.82 with an agreement that obesity is considered as a disease and the role of the primary health care physician is not only to refer obese patients to other specialized care as well as difficulties in counseling for weight reduction. However, the majority of physicians gave their obese patients advice on dietary habits and physical activities and also they are sometimes referred obese people to dieticians. Moreover, half of physicians provide educational materials as part of the management and above two third of the studied physicians never use medications in weight reduction. Only one third of them believe that they are well prepared for the treatment of obesity.  Conclusion: There exist gaps in attitudes contradictory for the management of obesity which indicates Physicians in Eastern Saudi Arabia showed a reasonable level of interest in participating in obesity prevention and management. Accordingly, they need for more education and training in management and prevention of obesity, and should continue education from medical school till post-graduate. Key Words: obesity, attitude, primary health care, and practices /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

Background: Patients with end stage kidney dysfunction is increasing dramatically in Saudi Arabia; especially in the age group of more than 65 years, which constitutes 21% of all chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients. In recent years, more attention is paid to uric acid (UA) as a risk factor in kidney impairment patients. Objectives: To assess the relationship between serum uric acid levels and hemodialysis efficiency among end stage renal disease patients in Hail, Saudi Arabia. Methods: A total of 255 hemodialysis patients (102 males and 153 females) were enrolled in this retrospective study. The range was 25 to 83 years with median age of 51 years. Blood samples drawn from patients before and after the hemodialysis session were analyzed for urea, creatinine, and uric acid. Results: The proportion of female patinets with CKD was significantly higher (60%,(p

Software Process Improvement (SPI) has become the survival key of numerous software development organizations who want to deliver their products cheaper, faster, and better. A software process ultimately describes the way that organizations develop their software products and supporting services; meanwhile, SPI on the other hand, is the act of changing the software process and maintenance activities. This chapter purposefully describes the benefits of software process improvement. The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) are briefly surveyed and extensively discussed. Prior literature on the benefits and impacts of CMM and CMMI-based software process improvement is also highlighted.

Different studies have been made in development of software process improvement (SPI) standards and models, or to identify factors that affect SPI success. However, these studies do not provide answers to questions about the effect of Geographical Region on CMMI-based SPI initiatives duration. And why there is obvious different time in the organizations' duration over the world. In this research we will study effect of geographical region on accelerating of transition time between CMMI levels. We'll apply empirical study between two different Geographical Regions in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. The aim of research is trying to identify most of factors which influence the duration in the literature review and the new factors that may postpone transition time among CMMI levels which are influenced by Geographical Region and are not included or existed in the literature review. Then suggest a proposed guideline which would help software organizations.