Hyperlipidemia as a major risk factor of atherosclerosis is treated with different drugs. Concerning length of therapy and vast majority of side effects, herbal medication may be suitable substitute for these drugs. In this single-blind, placebo controlled study, lipid profiles of 150 hyperlipidemic patients in cardiology outpatient department of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences were checked at same conditions. They were divided into three equal groups randomly (each composing of 50 patients). They were given enteric-coated garlic powder tablet (equal to 400 mg garlic, 1 mg allicin) twice daily, anethum tablet (650 mg) twice daily, and placebo tablet. All patients were put on NCEP type Π diet and Six weeks later, lipid profiles were checked. In garlic group: total cholesterol (decreased by 26.82 mg/dl, 12.1% reduction, and P-value: .000), and LDL-cholesterol (decreased by 22.18 mg/dl, 17.3% reduction, and P-value: .000) dropped. HDL-cholesterol (increased by 10.02 mg/dl, 15.7% increase, and P-value: .000) increased. Although triglyceride dropped by 13.72 mg/dl (6.3%) but this was not significant statistically (P-value: .222). In anethum group: surprisingly, triglyceride increased by 14.74 mg/dl (6.0%). Anethum could reduce total cholesterol by 0.4 % and LDL-cholesterol by 6.3% but these were not significant statistically (P-value: .828, and .210, respectively). Anethum has no significant effect on lipid profile, but garlic tablet has significant favorable effect on cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, and HDL-cholesterol. Garlic may play an important role in therapy of hypercholesterolemia.

Many patients experience anxiety and depression after cardiac bypass surgery.

Background: Myocardial infarction remains one the leading causes of mortality and morbidity and involves a high cost of care. Early prediction can be helpful in preventing the development of myocardial infarction with appropriate diagnosis and treatment. Artificial neural networks have opened new horizons in learning about the natural history of diseases and predicting cardiac disease. Methods: A total of 935 cardiac patients with chest pain and nondiagnostic electrocardiogram (ECG) were enrolled and followed for 2 weeks in two groups based on the appearance of myocardial infarction. Two types of data were used for all patients: nominal (clinical data) and quantitative (ECG findings). Two different artificial neural networks – radial basis function (RBF) and multi-layer perceptron (MLP) – were used to classify the two groups. Results: The RBF neural network had an accuracy of 83% with ECG findings and an accuracy of 78% with clinical features. When and clinical data were used in an MLP neural network trained with a genetic algorithm, ECG results led to a classification accuracy of 96% and clinical data yielded an accuracy of 84.5%. Conclusion: Both neural network structures predicted MI within about 2 weeks of hospital referral with an acceptable degree of accuracy in patients with nondiagnostic ECG. The MLP neural network significantly outperformed the RBF network because of the use of the genetic algorithm, which provided a global strategy to accurately determine MLP weights (clinical trials registry: NCT01870258). Key words: Artificial neural networks, Electrocardiography, Myocardial infarction, Multi-layer perceptron (MLP), Radial basis function (RBF).

Objective: Learning by lecture is a passive experience. Many innovative techniques have been presented to stimulate students to assume a more active attitude toward learning. In this study, simultaneous sketch drawing, as an interactive learning technique was applied to teach anatomy to the medical students. Materials and Methods: We reconstructed a fun interactive model of teaching anatomy as simultaneous anatomic sketching. To test the model's instruction effectiveness, we conducted a quasi- experimental study and then the students were asked to write their learning experiences in their portfolio, also their view was evaluated by a questionnaire. Results: The results of portfolio evaluation revealed that students believed that this method leads to deep learning and understanding anatomical subjects better. Evaluation of the students’ views on this teaching approach was showed that, more than 80% of the students were agreed or completely agreed with this statement that leaning anatomy concepts are easier and the class is less boring with this method. More than 60% of the students were agreed or completely agreed to sketch anatomical figures with professor simultaneously. They also found the sketching make anatomy more attractive and it reduced the time for learning anatomy. These number of students were agree or completely agree that the method help them learning anatomical concept in anatomy laboratory. More than 80% of the students found the simultaneous sketching is a good method for learning anatomy overall. Conclusion: Sketch drawing, as an interactive learning technique, is an attractive for students to learn anatomy.