Background & Objective: Each year thousands of children under five years old die due to acute respiratory infection and diarrheal diseases. A huge number of infants and children are hospitalized and visited by the physicians whereas most of these diseases can be prevented with timely treatment. Child health maintenance and improvement is one of the most important considerations in each society. Moreover, identifying child morbidity patterns should be a matter of concern in order to improve the health services. This study provides an overview of the leading causes of hospitalization among children with the aim of determining the most important causes of hospitalization and offering appropriate strategies to decrease them.

 Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2001 in Ardabil Ali-Asghar hospital. The subjects were randomly selected from the admission list on a daily basis. A questionnaire including demographic characteristics such as age, sex, time of admission and primary diagnosis was completed for each subject. The data were analyzed by SPSS software using descriptive statistics.

 Results: A total of 1945 patients were admitted almost half of which were studied. Febrile convulsion was found to be the most common cause of hospitalization (26%) while gastroenteritis (22.1%) and pneumonia (20%) were in the second and third order. Other causes included epilepsy, drug poisoning, meningitis, mumps, drug encephalitis, asthma, etc.

 Conclusion: According to the findings of this study, standard case management is necessary especially about febrile convulsion which is the most common cause of hospitalization. Since the present pattern is different from similar studies, further investigations are required to identify its causes.

  Background&Objectives: Febrile convulsion is a disease with good prognosis but its mismanagement leads patients to serious complications. T his study was conducted to compare practice guidelines with current practices in the management of children with first febrile convulsion.

  Methods: This descriptive-analytical study was conducted on patients hospitalized with the diagnosis of first febrile convulsion in Imam-Khomeni hospital of Urmia in 2004. The data were collected from their hospital records. Practice guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) were employed as reference. Current practices were compared with AAP recommended practice parameter about simple febrile seizure. Investigations performed included lumbar puncture, complete blood count, CRP, ESR, blood glucose, serum calcium, serum electrolytes, renal function tests, urinalysis, urine, and blood culture, chest X-ray, EEG and CT scan.

  Results: T wo hundred fifty one cases aged 6-60 months were studied. Complete blood count, ESR, CPR, blood glucose, serum calcium, serum electrolytes, renal function tests, urinalysis, urine culture, and blood culture in all cases (100%), lumbar puncture in 10%, chest X-ray in 24%, EEG in 1.4% and CT scan in 0.65% of cases were the measurements conducted.

  Conclusions: The present study showed that the use of unnecessary investigations was common. Investigations, though costly, proved to be of little diagnostic value. This problem can be alleviated through a well-organized national program or observing AAP practical guidelines.

 Background & Objectives: Mental retardation is a critical deficiency in cognitive functions, social skills, and adjustment behaviors. About 1 to 2 percent of people are mentally retarded because of various factors. The purpose of this research was to study the prevalence of mental retardation in Ardebil city and determining the role of environmental and Heredity factors on mental retardation. In other words, which of pre-, on-, and post-birth factors as well as environmental factors are related to mental retardation of 7-11 aged children.

 Methods: In order to find out the prevalence of mental retardation, a sample of 500 families were selected by simple random sampling method and were studied by causal-comparative method. Also percentage, frequency, and comparing of two independent groups were used to analyze the data and study the extent of prevalence.

 Results:�The results showed that the rate of prevalence of mental retardation is 3.6%, which is higher than the extent of prevalence of the world. Also the results of comparing two groups normal and mentally retarded revealed that familial marriages, in-birth events, fever and convulsion diseases during post-birth period are higher in mentally retarded group. Furthermore, the results showed that the level of mothers’ educations in normal group is significantly higher than that of mentally retarded group. And among the other factors, environmental factors were the most important factors of mental retardation of children in Ardabil city.

 Conclusion:�The high rate of prevalence of mental retardation and the role of environmental factors in mental retardation of children in Ardabil city require environmental intervention such as training of families and improving health level of society.