African health sciences
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African health sciences · Mar 2021
The impact of motherless paternity testing in a South African population.
Paternity investigations play an important role in determining biological relatedness, and in South Africa, the outcome of these investigations impacts medical, judicial and home affairs decisions. Short Tandem Repeat (STR) analysis is utilised to perform paternity and kinship analysis, due to the polymorphic nature of STR loci. The cost associated with paternity testing is high, and there is a demand for motherless testing. ⋯ We would recommend that within our setup and within similar setups, the mother always be included for testing, except in extreme scenarios such as death. False inclusion of putative fathers could have serious legal implications for testing laboratories.
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African health sciences · Mar 2021
Clustering time trends of breast cancer incidence in Africa: a 27-year longitudinal study in 53 countries.
Breast cancer is the most common, frequently diagnosed cancer with the highest incidence among female worldwide. Although the incidence is decreasing in developed countries, it is on increase in most of the African countries. ⋯ Providing health education programs is essential in African countries with rising trend of breast cancer during the last decades.
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African health sciences · Mar 2021
Early hearing threshold changes and peculiarities of audiometric assessments among patients in a drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment center.
Hearing threshold changes occurred relative to baseline at both one and two weeks after onset of aminoglycoside therapy. ⋯ Audiometric assessments within two weeks into therapy with anti-tuberculous therapy may not represent baseline audiometry. 7.5% of the patients developed ototoxicity within two weeks of therapy.
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African health sciences · Mar 2021
Medical mortality in an emergency department in Nigeria: the transition is obvious!
The emergency department (ED), a major entry point into the hospital, provides an insight to the type of cases seen, the quality of care and mortality spectrum in a health institution. We aim to identify the spectrum of medical causes of mortality in our ED, the demographic pattern and duration of stay before death. ⋯ The commonest cause of death in the ED was stroke. The burden of death was highest in the younger age group, with most occurring less than 24 hours of admission.
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African health sciences · Mar 2021
Atrial electromechanical delay and p wave dispersion associated with severity of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
The aim of this study was to evaluate atrial electromechanical delay (AEMD) with both electrocardiography (ECG) and echocardiography in patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). ⋯ Both mild and severe COPD groups decreased PWD, increased tricuspid PA and significantly decreased interand right intra-AEMD times in comparison to the control group.