Background & Objectives: With regards to the importance of health and Quality of Life improvement in the elderly in relation with physical activity and self esteem, the aim of this study was to determine the effect of programmed exercise on the self esteem of elderly residents in the nursing home of Rasht city in 2008.

  Methods: This study included a pretest and post test on 32 qualified samples. The Rosenberg self esteem scale were filled by them. Then, they attended a programmed exercise for one month. The scale was filled again by participants. The collected pre-test and pot-test data were analyzed using a-t-test SPSS software.

  Results: The average age of the participants was 73.53 (± 8.31). Most of them were widowed, 43.8% had no children, 87.5% were uneducated and the rest (12.5%) had a primary level of education. 37.2 of them had resided in the nursing home for less than one year and their average of residence was 1357±17.11 days. The source of income for 59.4% of participants was through children and relations. 27 persons (84.4%) had frequent visits with relations. 34.4% of them had a disease in history. There were significant correlations between number of children, marriage, education and job and number of previous jobs, gender job and education and number of previous job, visit frequency and education and time of the last visit. The correlation between sums of self esteem scores before and after the exercise was positive and significant and 22.81±4.84 Average of self esteem score before and after programmed exercise was 26.84±4.35.

  Conclusion: Regular exercise is effective in improving the self-esteem among the elderly and it can recommend to the elderly as a safe and cheap method.

  Background and objectives: High incidence of postoperative shivering leads to complications such as increased oxygen consumption, intracranial & intraocular pressure and pain. Some drugs including pethedine, dexamethasone and doxapram are used for prevention of shivering. The aim of this study is to compare the effect of dexamethasone and doxapram in prevention of post-anesthetic shivering.

  Methods: This study is a double blind clinical trial including 90 patients in ASA 1 and 2 classes. The patients were under general anesthesia for elective abdominal and chest surgery with same the anesthesia techniques. Samples were randomly divided into three groups (two drug received groups and one control group). First group received dexamethasone 0.1 mg/kg, the second group doxapram 0.75 mg/kg and the control group 3 ml of distilled water as injection. The visible shivering observed after each treatment. Collected data were analyzed using Chi-square, Fisher exact and ANOVA tests By SPSS 16 and p ≤ 0.05 was considered significant.

  Results: Our results showed a significant difference between shivering in drug received and control groups. Shivering was significantly decreased in drug received groups (p = 0 . 05) but there was no significant difference between them.

  Conclusion: This study showed that both drugs of dexamethasone and doxapram are effective in prevention of post-anesthetic shivering and can be substituted with pethedine. In addition to antishivering effect, doxapram has a respiratory stimulant effect that is, that is clinically important in postoperative stage.