Severe acute pancreatitis: Pathogenetic aspects and prognostic factors

Approximately 20% of patients with acute pancreatitis develop a severe disease associated with complications and high risk of mortality. The purpose of this study is to review pathogenesis and prognostic factors of severe acute pancreatitis (SAP). An extensive medline search was undertaken with focusing on pathogenesis, complications and prognostic evaluation of SAP. Cytokines and other inflammatory markers play a major role in the pathogenesis and course of SAP and can be used as prognostic markers in its early phase. Other markers such as simple prognostic scores have been found to be as effective as multifactorial scoring systems (MFSS) at 48 h with the advantage of simplicity, efficacy, low cost, accuracy and early prediction of SAP. Recently, several laboratory markers including hematocrit, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), creatinine, matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) and serum amyloid A (SAA) have been used as early predictors of severity within the first 24 h. The last few years have witnessed a tremendous progress in understanding the pathogenesis and predicting the outcome of SAP. In this review we classified the prognostic markers into predictors of severity, pancreatic necrosis (PN), infected PN (IPN) and mortality

Emerging inflammatory bowel disease in saudi outpatients: A report of 693 cases

Background/Aim: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic disease of unknown etiology and considered traditionally as a disease of the western world. Recently, rising trends have been observed in countries previously known to have a low prevalence and incidence. The aim of this study is to collect epidemiological data on IBD outpatients and to add data from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to the available IBD literature. Patients and Methods: The medical records of 693 Saudi patients with IBD over a period of 17 years, between 1993 and 2009, were reviewed. The demographic and clinical data and methods of diagnosis were retrieved. Results: The total number of patients in this cohort was 693. It constituted 238 (34.3%) ulcerative colitis (UC) and 455 (65.7%) Crohn′s disease (CD) patients. UC was steady throughout the years, whereas only 1.2 CD patients were diagnosed per year in the first 11 years, and 73.7 per year in the last six years. The median age of UC patients was 34 years, ranging from 10 to 80 years with a peak between 21 and 40 years and in CD it was 27 years, ranging from 11 to 73 years with a peak between 11 and 30 years. There was a male preponderance of 1.5:1 and 2:1, respectively. The rest of the data is discussed in this study. Conclusion: IBD is no longer a rare disease in KSA. UC is in a steady state, whereas CD is increasing significantly and far outnumbering UC

A New Five - Parameter Lifetime Model: Theory and Applications

In this paper we defined a new lifetime model called the the Exponentiated additive Weibull (EAW) distribution. The proposed distribution has a number of well-known lifetime distributions as special sub-models, such as the additive Weibull, exponentiated modified Weibull, exponentiated Weibull and generalized linear failure rate distributions among others. We obtain quantile, moments, moment generating functions, incomplete moment, residual life and reversed Failure Rate Functions, mean deviations, Bonferroni and Lorenz curves. The method of maximum likelihood is used for estimating the model parameters. Applications illustrate the potentiality of the proposed distribution

The Flexible Burr X-G Family: Properties, Inference, and Applications in Engineering Science

In this paper, we introduce a new flexible generator of continuous distributions called the transmuted Burr X-G (TBX-G) family to extend and increase the flexibility of the Burr X generator. The general statistical properties of the TBX-G family are calculated. One special sub-model, TBX-exponential distribution, is studied in detail. We discuss eight estimation approaches to estimating the TBX-exponential parameters, and numerical simulations are conducted to compare the suggested approaches based on partial and overall ranks. Based on our study, the Anderson–Darling estimators are recommended to estimate the TBX-exponential parameters. Using two skewed real data sets from the engineering sciences, we illustrate the importance and flexibility of the TBX-exponential model compared with other existing competing distributions