Indian J Med Res
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The delay in communicating the results to tuberculosis (TB) patients leads to increased rates of initial loss to follow up of treatment. The gap in communication among healthcare providers requires application of new tools that will address the challenges. Mobile phone technologies could be a useful tool in this context for the delivery of information. The objective was thus to evaluate communication by mobile applications such as the WhatsApp Messenger to decrease initial loss to follow up after initial treatment for TB. ⋯ After integrating of WhatsApp messenger application for communication among healthcare providers and researchers, the initial loss to follow up among patients being treated for TB was significantly decreased.
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Platelet concentrate contains a rich cocktail of growth factors that support growth and proliferation of cells. The primary goal of this study was to investigate the safety of platelet lysate (PL) in patients with critical limb ischaemia (CLI) not suitable for standard revascularization. Data on the preliminary efficacy are also presented. ⋯ Intramuscular injection of PL was well tolerated with no major adverse events reported in our study participants. With the observed satisfactory safety data, preliminary efficacy data of PL should be further validated.
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Continuous subclinical inflammation can be seen in patients with familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) during the attack-free period. The importance of oxidative stress parameters in acute appendicitis (AA) progression has also been shown in previous studies. So, oxidative stress and the oxidant/antioxidant balance may play a role in this persistent subclinical inflammation. With this background the main objective of this study was to investigate the usefulness of combining the thiol-disulfide homeostasis parameters and the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in the differential diagnosis of AA and an acute FMF attack. ⋯ The results of this study suggest that neutrophil, WBC and NLR values can be useful in the differentiation of AA from an acute FMF attack.
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Diagnosis of disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) rests primarily on the clinical profile along with supportive laboratory tests. The International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH) had proposed a scoring system for the diagnosis of overt DIC. However, fibrinogen values which are supposed to be low are often found to be elevated due to the associated inflammation seen in some cases. Moreover, peripheral smear is known to show schistocytes, which is also not included in the score. This study was done to evaluate ISTH scoring system and its modifications in suspected DIC. ⋯ In the present study, the calculated mortality was highest by ISTH score. Best agreement was between MIS score and ISTH score. In a resource-constrained setup where fibrinogen assay and therefore ISTH score is difficult, it is suggested that MIS score can be considered.