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Consideration of the lifestyles of nursing students, because of the fact that they are at the age where their choice of lifestyle can influence their entire lives, is of vital importance. On the other hand nursing students are conveyors of health information and are responsible for guiding others towards the way of life therefore they themselves need to be appropriate models for those in need of help and the society as a whole. This study is a descriptive research, whose aim is comparing the lifestyle of first and final term female BS nursing students. This investigation was undertaken in Nursing and Midwifery schools of Tehran Medical Science Universities, by sampling 139 students in their first term and 159 students in their final term. The factors of life style under examination were nutrition, exercise, smoking, safety precautions and stress management. The method of data collection was questionnaires that consisted of demographic and life style particularities. Research findings showed that 37.4% of the first term students had moderate nutrition and 49.9% had good nutrition. As concerns physical exercise (37.4%) and (41.1%) of the first and final term students had moderate physical exercise respectively. Research findings also showed that none of the students of either two groups smoked cigarettes. As relates to safety precautions results showed that 37.2% first term students and 35% in final terms students had moderate behavior. In stress management (36.5%) first term students and (32.9) last term students had good behavior. In general (40%) of the samples in their first term had moderate lifestyles while (32.8%) in their last term had very good lifestyles. "t" Statistical test showed no significant difference between the two groups. Research findings showed that nursing education and training in no way influenced life style and that other factors were influential but they require further study.

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Children are the biggest national investment that a society can make. With increased child population so too have their problems increased, amongst which are the increased incidence of street children, which as a result has endangered their health. This research is a descriptive and cross sectional study towards determining the effective factors on the self-concept of street children aged 6-12 years who were referred to the Khajouye Kermani culture house of Tehran in 1380. In this regard, 140 street children between the ages of 6-12 were chosen. The method was a 4-part questionnaire which included personal, family and societal information and questions related to the self- concept of the children. The data was collected by interviews with the children. In accordance with the average and the deviation criteria achieved, the level of self-concept was divided into four groups, extremely negative, negative, positive and extremely positive. The results showed that half of the subjects (50%) had very negative concepts of themselves and only 2.2% of them had a very positive self- concept levels. Therefore the street children had a very low self- concept level. Also as concerns the factors affecting self- concept was also a meaningful relationship between self- concept and some factors such as gender, education, level of income, duration of work, level of happiness within the family, counseling, reaction to the child's mistakes, having necessities for the home, adequate nutrition and clothing, having street friends before work (P<0.05). Therefore street children are at risk as regards their mental and physical development because they suffer from low self- concept levels and require special attention. Because of the vast responsibilities nurses can play an important role to improve of the health of these children.

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Introduction: Immunization is the most effective means of improving health. In the absence of a proper and regular immunization program, people and especially children will be left at high risk of many infectious diseases. This study was designed to assess Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) for mothers and children under 2 years old in Shahriar, South west of Tehran.

Materials and Methods: This research was a cross-sectional study. standard cluster sampling was applied to select 210 children in the age group 18-24 months old and 240 women with a child less than 1 year of age who were resident in Shahriar city. Standard formats were used for collection of the data. Descriptive and analytic tests (chi squares, Fisher exact-test, t test, ANOVA, bivariate and logistic regression module) were applied to analyze the data.

Results: The results showed that vaccination coverage in children was over 90 percent. 17.6 percent of the children were partially vaccinated and 41.4 percent were vaccinated completely but with more than one-month delay. The important character which was strongly associated with more than one month delay in immunization was center of childhood immunization. Although 83.8% of women with a child under 1 year age had received twice tetanus immunizations, only 13.3% of women had obtained the complete series of five immunization. The character which was associated significantly with dT immunization status was the length of time that mother had been living in Shahriar.

Conclusion: There are some barriers in vaccination delivery, including unefficient recall and follow up systems and scattered records of dT vaccination. These factors were statistically associated with immunization status and therefore some proper solutions against these barriers should be introduced. It is now time for a boost to be given to both quality and sustainability of appropriate immunization programs.

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Introduction: Job satisfaction of midwives, as key members of healthcare system, has special importance in the quality of midwifery care to the vulnerable groups of the society i.e. mothers and children.

Materials and Methods: This is a survey and cross sectional study. Sampling size was 251 midwives, which were chosen through cluster sampling. Data were gathered by questionnaire in one stage and were analyzed by SPSS software, using descriptive and analytic (2, Pearson correlation) statistical methods. Results:

Results of this research demonstrated that satisfaction level of midwives in two aspects of job position (62.9%) and relationship with colleagues (48.2%) was moderate. It was low in the aspects of salary and benefits (92.8%), job security (69.7%), managerial policies and work condition (64.9%), supervisory (48.6%) and relationship with personal life (49.8%). There was a significant relationship and correlation between job satisfaction and all of its aspects, strongest with the aspect of managerial policies (r=0.87) and weakest with the relationship with colleagues (r=0.547). There was no significant relationship between job satisfaction and demographic characteristics such as age, academic degree, marital status, the number of children and monthly salary but there was a significant relationship between job satisfaction and the condition of house ownership, the years of job experience, the condition of employment, the place of work, work shift and whether they liked midwifery when they chose it (p<0.05).

Conclusion: Half of midwives (49.4%) had moderate job satisfaction, 49% had low and only 1.6% had high job satisfaction. Considering the results of this research, it can be concluded that the authorities must take efficient measures to omit the most important causes of low job satisfaction through increasing salaries and benefits, promoting job security, improving work condition, reformation of managerial and supervisory systems and using midwives’ professional ability in areas of their skill’s.

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Background & Aim: Number of patients with bloodborn disease is increased. Because of degenerative effects of the disease on body&aposs organs, and patient&aposs need to hospitalization, contamination risk for nurses and other patients is also increased. So investigation of the performance the principals of the safety injection by nurses are necessary.

Methods & Materials: This study is a descriptive research. Sample of the study were 85 nurses employed in emergency units of the selected hospitals. The research data gathering tools were a questionnaire included 7 question about demographic data and 3 checklists included 29, 20, 15 objects about performance of the safety injection in three steps (pre, during, and after injection). The statistical tests included t-test, Pearson correlation. Data analysis performed by SPSS software.

Results: This study showed that the majority of subjects were 23-30 years old (60%), female (70.6%), have BS (97.6%) in nursing and clinical experience under 5 years in hospital (55.3%) and emergency unit (80%) and didn’t participant in infection control course (75.3%) and work in rotation shift (82.4%). About half of the nurses (49.4%, 51.8%, 55.3%), had desirable performance in three steps of injection. Performance of safety injection had a significant correlation with sex (p=0.002), and preinjection step with during injection step and after injection (p=0.000), (p=0.001) respectively.

Conclusion: According to the results of this study, the half of nurses had desirable performance in injection process, but the half of them had undesirable performance. It is suggested that nurses and managers pay more attention and try to performance standard and world precautions and principals of safety injection to prevent convection of bloodborn diseases.

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Background & Aim: Regarding to increasing of life expectancy, Women spend a greater proportion of their life in menopause that is associated with complications and makes disability for them. One of the safe treatments for these complications is herbal therapy.

Methods & Materials: This research is a semiexperimental study. Randomized cluster sampling method was used to select 50 menopaused women ranging from 45 to 55 years old. Experimental group used vitagnus (40 drops daily) for three months. The data was collected by interviewing and a structured questionnaire and daily diary. The data was analyzed by descriptive (percent, mean, standard deviation) and inferencing (2, t-test, Mcnimar, repeated ANOVA) statistical methods by SPSS software.

Results: The results showed a significant reduction in early menopausal complications after intervention (p<0.05). The most major improvement in menopaused women was realated to hotflash (52.2%) and night sweat (51.3%). The other complications showed moderate improvement. Conclusion: Vitagnus is effective in improving of early menopausal complications and therefore doctors and midwives can prescribe vitex instead of HRT in menopausal women.

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Background & Aim: Improving the quality of life is generally one of the main goals in caring of the patients with congestive heart failure, so identifying factors affecting it is significantly important. This study was conducted to determining the quality of life of these patients.

Methods & Materials: 184 of patients congestive heart failure who referred to clinics of Tehran University of Medical Sciences were chosen by goal-based sampling method. Data collection was done by questionnaire, which was consisted of 4 parts: individual factors, factors related to disease, patient knowledge and quality of life. Data analysis was done by SPSS computerized software.

Results: Most of the researching samples in fallowing dimensions had undesirable quality of life: physical activity dimension (44.6%), Psychological dimension (47.3%), Economical/Social dimension (49.5%), total Quality of life (46.7%) and had fairly desirable quality of life in general health dimension (42.4%). There is a significant statistical relationship between quality of life and these variables: job, Education level, care giver, the intensity of illness, duration of illness period, number of refers to physician and hospitalization, duration of combination of hypertension with CHF, presence of edema, high cholesterol, characteristics of disease, the intensity of fatigue at the time of research and in last 1 month ago (p=0.000) and the kinds of using drugs (p=0.039), but there is not a significant statistical relationship between quality of life and these variable: age, gender, Marriage status, Number of people living together, Having therapeutic insurance, Smoking, Body Mass Index: BMI presence of Myocardial Infarction or other diseases and patient knowledge.

Conclusion: Congestive heart failure has a negative affect on quality of life. So assessing the quality of life and promoting it is viewed as one of the duties of nurses and also as one of the major caring goals.

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Background & Aim: One of the responsibilities of nurses is to identify of effective factors on sleeping, because identification of these factors prevents from occurrence of sleep disorders, improves sleeping, decreases duration of hospitalization, and reduces use of hypnotic drugs.

Methods & Materials: This research is a comparative descriptive study. The population under research was included 50 nurses who were working in CCU wards and 50 patients who were hospitalized in CCU wards that were selected by interviewing and information gathering tools was a questionnaires which consisted of tow parts and for each group one questionnaire was used. The first part was included demographic specification. Second part is consisted of 56 questions (four rating) related to effective factors on patient&aposs sleeping in the domains such as environmental factors, personal (physical and mental) factors, pre-sleeping habits and an extra question (to explain other factors with the except of factors that mentioned in sleeping). Gathered data is processed by SPSS software, 12&aposTh version, and for achieving to research goals, descriptive and perceptive statistical methods (such as t-test, ANOVA test, and Pearson coefficient of correlation) were used. Then descriptive statistic was used in data analysis and statistical t-tests were used to compare of these two groups opinions.

Results: The results of this research showed that environmental factors such as turned on light, pain, anxiety due to loss of job, fears of outcome of disease, connection to monitoring systems are the important effective factors on sleeping according to the nurses points of view however patients believe that phone ring, pain, anxiety from loss of job, fears of outcomes of disease, connection to monitoring systems are important.

Conclusion: According to the research results, the most important effective factors on sleeping are "turned on light", "phone ring" "pain", "anxiety from loss of job", "fears of outcome of illness", "connection to monitoring systems". The foundation of this schedule is based on identification of effective factors on sleeping according to viewpoint of patients and then eliminating the disturbing factors.

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Background & Aim: Some aspects of life style in adulthood have major preventive role from osteoporosis in adult ages. This research has been done in order to determining female teenager’s life style in relation with prevention of osteoporosis.

Methods & Materials: This research was a descriptive - analytical study. In this study, 760 person of female teenage students in high schools and pre-university centers of zone 17 in Tehran city were chosen by random classified cluster sampling method. In this study, the tool for data collection was written questionnaire, and method of it was answering to questionnaire. The questionnaire had 2 parts. First part included demographic characteristics, and second part included different dimensions of lifestyle in relation with prevention of osteoporosis, such as nutrition, exercise and physical activity, habits (smoking, using weight loss food regimen and weight loss drug). The life style categorized as 3 levels unfavorable, partially favorable, and favorable. The collected information was assessed by SPSS software and descriptive and analytical statistical methods were used to reaching study objects.

Results: Results Showed nutrition, phisycal activity and exercise the highest percent of cases (51.8%, 57.7%) had undesirable lifestyle. Also 50 percent of cases had undesirable lifestyle. About habits (Smoking, using weight loss food regimen and using weight loss drug) the highest percent of cases (74.9%) had desirable lifestyle. Also there was a significant statistical relationship between life style and variables of education level (p=0.004), economical status of family (p=0.043), the birth number in family (p=0.001) and educational level of mother (p=0.005).

Conclusion: According to the results of research, lifestyle of 50% of female teenagers was undesirable. Findings of this research are attentive and need more assessment and planning by responsible people in order to omitting noted problems in lifestyle.

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Background & Aim: Fatigue is a premature symptom in the patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of breathing exercises on fatigue level of COPD patients.

Methods & Materials: This clinical trial is a semi-experimental study. 60 patients suffering COPD which are bedridden at, Tehran university of Medical Sciences hospital wards which have been sampled simply and divided into experience and control group randomly. Data gathering is done by interview and data registration from the files. The data gathering tools are questionnaires, fatigue severity scale (FSS) and respiratory exercise usage checklist. The questionnaire includes to sections of demographic characteristics and patient info. The exercises check list is scaled from 0 to 40 in the way that the maximum amount of usage in 10 days, for 4 daily sessions would be 40 and for the case of usage 0 score is assigned. Fatigue severity scale includes 9 questions with visual diagrams scaled from 0 (Lack of fatigue) to 4 (server fatigue). The gathered data is analysis using SPSS software and the descriptive and deductive statistical methods (Tisuchi, Kai2 and Pearson correlation exam) are used to achieve the research goals. Results: The results show that the average fatigue intensity for the experience group is 40.916 with the standard deviation of 14.4 and for the control group is 52.20 with 8.539 standard deviation after the study and statistical T-exam (p=0.001) indicated that there is a significant difference in fatigue severity between experience and control groups after the study. The findings also showed that the average fatigue severity before (55.766) and after (40.166) using the respiratory exercises in the experience group (p<.001) has enormous difference. While the average fatigue severity in the control group (p=0.002) before (54.166) and after (52.200) the study has a ting difference. Regarding the correlation of using respiratory exercises and the changes in fatigue severity, the Pearson statistical exam showed that there is a significant reverse correlation between using respiratory exercises and fatigue severity (r=-0.593, p=0.001).

Conclusion: Based on the research findings it can be concluded that using respiratory exercises is effective in reducing the fatigue in the patients with COPD that also confirms the research assumption and the more the respiratory exercises are used the less is the amount of fatigue in the interfered samples.

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Background & Aim: Adolescent is a unique period during the life cycle. Knowing about the suitable nutrition in this period would prevent from a lot of diseases related to the nutrition during the adulthood. But unfortunately in recent decades we have observed having unsuitable snaking in adolescents. This study aimed to determine the quality of snaking in adolescents 12-18 years old in one of district of Tehran, Iran.

Methods & Materials: This study is a descriptive cross sectional research with the purpose of determining the quality of snaking in adolescents 12-18years old at 17 districts in Tehran city. The samples were 907 students that including the Iranian girls and boys who were 12-18 years old and educating in one of the guidance school or high schools of the district 17 in Tehran city. The instrument was a questionnaire and interview the data were analyzed by SPSS software.

Results: The results showed that majority of students 35.1% were 14-16 years old, 52.8% were boys, 26.1% were educating in the first year of high school. 71/5% had 1-3 sisters or brothers and also the majority of students had natural BMI, 28% were having fried potato and cheese puff over than moderate level as snaking 46% were having snaking daily. Less than half of the studied cases 46.7% believe that having snaking is necessary 56.9% had sometimes snaking. Chi2 test and p<0.05 showed a significant relationship between some of demographic variables with snaking in adolescents.

Conclusion: The result showed that type, time and number of snaking were not suitable and it is necessary to teach the students and their parents more about matter.

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Background & Aim: The main aim of performance appraisal is aid to staff development and increasing job motivation. Outcomes of performance appraisal consider as a determining indicators of the amount of success in achieving the mentioned aims. The aim of this study is to determine the employed nurses’ views regarding the performance appraisal&aposs outcomes and its relation with job motivation in medical-surgical wards of affiliated hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

Methods & Materials: This investigation is a descriptive correlational study. The sample size was 120 of employed nurses in medical-surgical units in Tehran University of Medical Science that was selected by cluster sampling. The data was collected by questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, t-test and Pearson’s correlation coefficient were used for analysis.

Results: Perception of the most samples was almost positive (65%) about performance appraisal’s outcomes. They believed that the rate of the job motivation in surveyed units was low. There was a statistical significance relationship between performance improvement as one of the outcomes of the performance appraisal and job motivation (p<0.05).

Conclusion: Aiding to nurses performance improvement with using of performance appraisal was the only factor that was correlate with the job motivation in comparison with the other expectances of performance appraisal.

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Background & Aim: Asthma, as a chronic respiratory disease, is a major health problem worldwide. The quality of life of asthmatic patients is affected by long-term treatment and continuous episodes of asthmatic attacks. The aim of this study is to assess the quality of life in asthmatic patients.

Methods & Materials: This descriptive study carried out among randomly selected asthmatic patients (n=386) referred to lung clinic in Imam Khomeini hospital, Tehran. Data were collected using a two-section questionnaire. The first section was to assess demographic characteristics of the subjects and the second section was to assess the quality of life. Validity of the questionnaire was evaluated using content validity and reliability was determined using a-kronbach.

Results: The results showed that the majority of subjects were female, married, illiterate, and in the 41-50 age group. 45.1 per cent of study subjects had relatively appropriate quality of life. Quality of life in 45.3 per cent of the patients was inappropriate. There were significant statistical relationship between sex, age, education, economic status and quality of life (P<0.05).

Conclusion: According to the findings, in general, quality of life was inappropriate and relatively appropriate. So comprehensive programs for treatment and care of these patients should be planned.

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Background & Aim: Women with high risk pregnancy experience changes in their personal, family, and social life that affect their quality of life and mental status. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of type of pregnancy (normal or high risk) on quality of life and depression levels in pregnant women.

Methods & Materials: In this case-control study, a total of 100 women (50 women with normal pregnancies and 50 women with high risk pregnancies) who referred to the prenatal clinics of Kashan Medical University were studied. Subjects were randomly selected and then allocated in the normal (control) or high risk (case) groups. Data were gathered using a three-part questionnaire that included demographic characteristics, the Short Form 36 Health Survey (SF-36) to assess the quality of life, and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) to assess the levels of depressive symptoms. 

Results: In this study, the results revealed that the mean score of the quality of life was lower in the women with high risk pregnancy (53/20±16/83) in comparison with the women with normal pregnancy (62/18 12/48). The mean of the BDI scores in high risk pregnancies (15/34±9/15) were significantly higher than in normal pregnancies (9/8±5/44). Depression has strong negative correlation with quality of life in both women with high risk and normal pregnancies (P<0.001).

Conclusion: To sum up, it is very important to identify women that are at risk and help them to promote their quality of life.

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Background & Objective: Studies show, clients&apos satisfaction is an important indicator for service quality assessment. Finding causes of dissatisfaction helps to promote health care services quality.  High quality prenatal care services and clients&apos satisfaction decreases maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity. The perceived quality of the prenatal care by the mothers can not be effectively evaluated unless considering the opinions, demands and satisfaction rate of mothers who receive the care. The objective of this study is to measure prenatal care utilization rate and patients satisfaction in the clinics of Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2005.

Methods & Materials: In this cross-sectional study, 380 pregnant women who had received prenatal care services in two hospitals and eight health centers were selected randomly and interviewed. Data were gathered using a questionnaire including demographic characteristics and satisfaction questions. Data were analyzed using SPSS and tested with chi-square and Pearson exact test.

Results: According to the results, 53.4 % and 14.8% of the pregnant women had received complete and incomplete prenatal care, respectively. Most of the pregnant women (54.7%) were completely satisfied, 23.7% and 21.6% were moderately and poorly satisfied, respectively. There was a significant relationship between the utilization rate and satisfaction of mothers (P<0.001). 53.4% of mothers in health centers and 46% in hospitals had received complete prenatal care. Satisfaction with prenatal care in health centers and hospitals were 57.5% and 47%, respectively. This difference was probably related to the amount of emotional and physical care received by the patients in the different settings and the characteristics of the centers in which these services are provided. The kind of setting had significant relationship with the utilization and satisfaction rates (P=0.003, P=0.005, respectively). The results showed that the utilization and satisfaction rates in the health centers in which health-care providers were midwives were better than the hospitals in which health-care providers were medical and midwifery students. But in both settings it was lower than 60%.

Conclusion: As a result, the utilization rate and satisfaction of mothers were inadequate in health centers and hospitals (lower than 70%). In the hospitals, they were lower than the health centers. The standardization of prenatal care and improvement of educational programs in hospitals should be considered.

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Background & Objective: Research utilization is a new phenomenon in Iran and the Iranian nurses tend to practice based on evidences. The objective of this research is to investigate nurses&apos attitude toward research utilization.

Methods & Materials: This research is an analytical-descriptive study. The sample included 410 clinical nurses and instructors who were selected through multistage stratified sampling method. Data were gathered using a two-section questionnaire and analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS).

Results: 91.2% of respondents believed in using research findings in practice. 77.6% of nurses agreed with the following statement: "Research is not applicable in practice". Furthermore 88.3% agreed that" Research helps to build a scientific base for nursing". The majority of respondents had positive attitude toward research utilization. There was a significant difference between attitude and kind of professional activity, setting and research activity.

Conclusion: It seems having positive attitude toward research utilization is not sufficient for applying research results in practice. In order to utilize the research findings, more relevant research in this field of nursing is required.

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Background & Aim: Rheumatoid arthritis is one of the most common chronic diseases with unknown causes and it is the most important cause of disability especially in adulthood that can have a considerable impact on patients&apos quality of life.

Methods & Materials: This is a cross-sectional study. One hundred and ninety patients with rheumatoid arthritis referred to rheumatology clinic and rheumatology wards of Tehran university of Medical sciences&apos hospitals were randomly selected. The data were collected using a two-section questionnaire including demographic and disease characteristics, and quality of life questions. All analyzes were carried out using SPSS statistical software.

Results: The result showed that quality of life of %50 of patients was high and moderate and the other 50% had low quality of life. Approximately 50% of the patients reported that they have no problem in their physical, socio-economic, mental, sleep and rest, and general health regarding rheumatoid arthritis. There were significant relationships between age, marital status, employment, duration of the disease, physiotherapy, and family income with the quality of life.

Conclusion: The results showed that quality of life in half of the patients (%50) was low. Determining the patients&apos quality of life result in designing proper programs and strategies for prevention and control of the disease that result in promoting quality of life.

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Background & Aim: Labor pain is regarded as one of the most intolerable pains which women experience during their life. Although there are many alternatives which can effect on person&aposs response and perception to pain and suffering, the pain is felt especially more severely and longer by primogeniture. Annually thousands of selective cesarean operations are performed just because of delivery pain frightening as the main reason. The pain can produce diverse and unwanted effects on delivery procedure and mother-fetus condition. So finding a method to relieve the pain and suffering is one the policies intently considered by health care systems. The aim of present study is to determine the effect of Entonox on implication of painless labor and woman&aposs satisfaction in a Hospital in Orumieh in 1385.

Methods & Materials: This research is a single blind clinical trail. Samples were consisted of women (160 persons), in two groups (each group 80 persons), which selected randomly. The intervention group used Entonox and the control group inhaled Oxygen. All subjects were instructed to use Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and to inhale gases correctly. Due to emergency need for caesarean operation 2 members of the intervention group and 3 ones from the control group leaved the study. Data gathering tool were consisted of data registration form, VAS scale, mother vital sign recorder, and fetus heart rate recorder. The data were analysed using descriptive (relative & absolute frequencies, mean, and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (t-test, Mann-Whitney U, Chi-squared, Kolmogrove-Smirnov test) by SPSS computer software.

Results: According to the findings pain severity rate among the intervention group significantly was lower than the control group in the different hours of delivery procedure (P<0.001). Using Entonox made no effect on mother&aposs vital signs, labor process, fetus heart rate, first and fifth minute Apgar and bleeding rate after delivery. Also it was shown that probable side effects of Entonox inhalation such as drowsiness and mouth stiffness were more common in the intervention group (P<0.001), but no significant difference was seen in other complications. Meanwhile delivery satisfaction rate was higher in the intervention members.

Conclusion: It seems that Entonox inhalation might come in useful as an effective and safe method to alleviate labor pain and suffering along side with fewer likely risks for fetus and mother in clinical centers.

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Background & Aim: Screening methods of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) diagnosis is controversy. The survey of relation between GDM and its risk factors helps to determine screening methods. This study was performed to find weather the prevalence of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is influenced by higher hemoglobin (Hb) level and mean corpuscular volume (MCV) before 14 weeks gestation in GDM women and healthy women.

Methods & Materials: In this case-control study, 33 pregnant women with GDM in case group (diagnosed according to the Carpenter and Costan criteria) were compared with 33 pregnant women in control group without GDM after 24-28 weeks&apos gestation. Data were gathered using a questionnaire and a data registration form by interview and biophysical methods. The data were analysed by descriptive and inferential statistics (Chi-squared, Fisher exact test, two samples Kolmogrov-Smirnov test, and Pearson correlation coefficient).

Results: There was no significant difference between two groups in demographic factors and medical history. T-test showed a significant difference between the amount of Hb in the control group (13.23±0.078 gr/dl) and the case group (12.23±0.70 gr/dl) before 14 weeks gestation (P<0.001). There was no significant difference between MCV level in two groups (P=0.294). Also MCV level before 14 weeks&apos gestation was 86.92+ 4.51 fl in the case group and 85/56+5/84 fl in the control group.

Conclusion: The result showed that GDM women had higher Hb level than the control group before 14 weeks&apos gestation. It seems that a high maternal Hb in the first trimester is a risk factor for GDM and it can be used for screening and diagnosing of GDM. Also more investigations of the logic of routine iron supplementation in pregnant women who have a high level of Hb are suggested.

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Background & Aim: Preeclampsi which is a common and important disorder in pregnancy is one of the three leading causes of maternal mortality. It is worthy to find out an appropriate screening test for it. This study aimed to assess serum hematocrit level as a screening test for preeclampsia.

Methods & Materials: Using a randomized stratification, 660 women who were in the 24-28 weeks of gestation were recruited to the study from a prenatal clinic of Taamin Ejtemaei hospital in Tehran. Data were collected through observations and interviews. Data were recorded in a questionnaire and recording form. The women were followed up until delivery. Data were analyzed in SPSS.

Results: There was significant differences in 24-28 weeks serum hematocrit levels in preeclamptic and non-preeclamptic women (P<0.001). There were 58.6% sensitivity, 88.9% specificity, 33.7% positive predictive value, and 95.7% negative predictive value for serum hematocrit.

Conclusion: A Serum hematocrit level in 24-28 weeks of gestation is a simple and inexpensive test that can help to detect high-risk preeclamptic women.