PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to identify effects of fatigue, depression and anxiety on quality of life in pregnant women with preterm labor. METHODS: With a survey design, data were collected from 138 mothers who were admitted at a hospital in Seoul, between June 2014 and September 2015. Instruments used to collect the data for the study were: Fatigue Continuum Form, Depression anxiety stress scale (DASS-21) and maternal postpartum quality of life (MAPP-QOL). RESULTS: The mean fatigue score was 68.30 with 50.7% of women being depressed and 79.7% of the 138 women being anxious. The mean quality of life was 18.92 with quality of life being associated with fatigue, depression and anxiety. Depression and fatigue explained 26% of the variance in quality of life. CONCLUSION: Depression and fatigue adversely affected women's quality of life. It is important to address appropriate management of depression and fatigue in order to improve quality of life in pregnant women with preterm labor.
Anxiety* ; Depression* ; Fatigue* ; Female ; Humans ; Mothers ; Obstetric Labor, Premature* ; Postpartum Period ; Pregnancy ; Pregnant Women* ; Quality of Life* ; Seoul

BACKGROUND: Sputum decontamination with NALC-NaOH (N-acetyl-L-cysteine-sodium hydroxide) is known to better detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb) by culture than that with using NaOH, which is widely used in Korean hospitals. In this report, sputum samples collected from pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) patients were treated with either NaOH or NALC-NaOH, and we compared the results of smear and culture positivity to determine whether the NALC-NaOH treatment method improves culture positivity in the sputum samples, and especially for those sputum samples that are smear negative and scanty. METHODS: For each decontamination method, 436 sputum samples from pulmonary TB patients in the National Masan Tuberculosis Hospital were collected for this study. Sputum from a patient was collected two times for the first and second day of sampling time, and these samples were employed for the decontamination process by performing the 4% NaOH and NALC-2% NaOH treatment methods, respectively, for detecting M. tb by an AFB (Acid Fast Bacilli) smear and also by culture in solid Ogawa medium. RESULTS: The NaOH and NALC-NaOH treatment methods did not significantly affect the AFB smear positivity of the sputum samples (33.0% vs 39.0%, respectively, p=0.078). However, the culture positive percents of M. tb in the Ogawa medium treated with NALC-NaOH and NaOH were 39.7% and 28.0%, respectively, which was a significantly different (p=0.0003). This difference in culture was more prominent in the sputum samples that were smear negative (the positive percents with NALC-NaOH and NaOH were 15.8% and 7.2%, respectively, p=0.0017) and scanty (NALC-NaOH and NaOH were 60.8% and 42.9%, respectively, p=0.036), but not for a smear that was 1+ or higher (p>0.05). CONCLUSION: NALC-NaOH treatment is better than NaOH treatment for the detection of M. tb by culture, but not by smear, and especially when the AFB smear is negative and scanty.
Decontamination ; Hospitals, Chronic Disease ; Humans ; Mycobacterium tuberculosis ; Nitroimidazoles ; Sputum ; Sulfonamides ; Tuberculosis ; Tuberculosis, Pulmonary