West African journal of medicine
-
Comparative Study
Recognition of the difficult airway in normal Nigerian adults (a prospective study).
Difficulty with laryngoscopy and intubation is known to be the most frequent cause of anaesthetic related deaths. Awareness of the possibility of difficulty would enable the anaesthetist to be adequately prepared. 57 "normal" adult patients were examined pre-operatively and at laryngoscopy using the Mallampatti (1985) and the Cormack (1984) classification respectively. The result showed that none of the patients was in the IV Mallampatti nor IV Cormack groups. ⋯ Intubation failed in these two patients. The majority of patients were classified as Mallampatti class I (68.42%) and Cormack grade I (63.16%). This in effect demonstrates that in most "normal" patients laryngoscopy and intubation should be fairly easy.
-
In 914 consecutive medical admissions to Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, the prevalence of infection with Human Immunodeficiency Virus type I (HIV-I) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 2 (HIV-2) was 12.6%. The prevalence in females was twice that found in males. The infection rate was maximum in the age group 25-29 years for females (45%) and 30-34 years for males (29%). ⋯ The cases with HIV-2 infection tended to be older than those with HIV-I infection. For detecting HIV seropositivity in our patients the World Health Organization recommended case definition for AIDS in Africa gave a sensitivity of 32%, a specificity of 93% and a positive predictive value of 42%. The case definition gave the highest specificity and positive predictive values when cases of tuberculosis were not included in the analysis.