A study on needle stick injuries among health care workers in a tertiary care hospital in India

Background: Needle stick injury among health workers is regarded as an occupational hazard. Health care workers are at risk of having blood-borne diseases in case they are exposed to blood and other biological samples of the patients. Moreover, staff including doctors working in tertiary care hospitals has high work load which results in increased chances of getting these injuries. The aim and objectives of this study were to find out the prevalence of needle stick injury among different categories of health care workers. Authors also aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices associated with it.Methods: A hospital based cross sectional study design to know the prevalence of needle stick injury among various health care workers of Karpagam Faculty of Medical Sciences and Research, a tertiary level care hospital in Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India. A total of 250 health care workers were selected for the study purpose. A self-designed, semi-structured, pre-tested questionnaire was used to assess the prevalence of needle stick injuries and the factors associated with it.Results: A majority of health care workers (94%) knew about needle stick injury and 92% were aware that HIV can be transmitted through needle stick injury, 78.4% and 69.65% were aware of Hepatitis-B and Hepatitis-C transmission respectively. About 28.4% of subjects had encountered needle stick injury in their past. Furthermore, it was found that type of exposure and place of exposure was significantly associated with different categories of health care workers (p <0.001).Conclusions: Prevention of health workers against needle stick injury is the best possible way to prevent several bloods borne diseases. There should be a prevention programme which special focus on training of health care workers. Further strategies aiming at preventive measures and reporting of the Needle stick injuries accidents should be made compulsory among health care workers

Exploring satisfaction and outcomes in rhinoplasty: experience from a tertiary care hospital in Kashmir valley, India

Background: Augmentation rhinoplasty is a popular yet challenging procedure that aims to improve both the nasal appearance and quality of life of patients. The purpose of this study was to examine the satisfaction and outcome after augmentation rhinoplasty at a tertiary care hospital in Kashmir valley. Methods: The study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital in Kashmir valley among patients who underwent the procedure using autologous cartilage grafts at the ENT department from October 2021 to December 2021. The sample size was 56. The patients age, gender, pre-operative findings, surgical techniques, post-operative outcomes, complications, and corrective interventions were recorded. The rhinoplasty outcome evaluation questionnaire was used to evaluate the patients' pre and post-operative status, with outcome assessed three months after surgery. Results: The present study included 56 patients which comprised of 39 (69.64%) males. The mean age of patients was 41±9.6 years. The indication for surgery was a mix of aesthetic and functional reasons in 56% subjects with 78% undergoing a primary surgery. The mean pre-operative score on the ROE questionnaire was 9.21±0.8 which improved to a mean score of 19.56±1.1 at three months after surgery. Overall 75% (42/56) patients reported a post operative ROE score of ≥80%. There was a significant improvement in all domains assessed by the ROE questionnaire, including appearance and function. Conclusions: Augmentation rhinoplasty can provide satisfactory aesthetic and functional outcomes for patients with nose deformities with consistent improvement across all domains related to aesthetics and functionality

Anti-Metastatic Propensity of Biscoumarin Scaffold Synthesized Under Catalyst Free Aqueous Phase Microwave Irradiation

An environmentally benign, catalyst free, aqueous phase, microwave assisted method for the synthesis of biscoumarin derivatives using 4-hydroxycoumarin and different aldehydes is reported. The comparative investigation of the same synthetic methodology under conventional refluxing, domestic and scientific programmable microwave synthesizer has been attempted for the purpose of comparing the reaction performance in terms of % yield, reaction time, reproducibility and reaction control. In addition to the increased yields and attenuated reaction times for biscoumarin synthesis, the difficulty of reaction control and result reproducibility usually encountered with domestic microwave ovens have been addressed through an optimized synthetic methodology using microwave synthesizer. Screening bioactive compounds for their propensity towards inhibition of cancer metastasis is a must step in advancement of cancer chemotherapy. The synthesized biscoumarin scaffold was investigated for inhibitory metastatic activity against human lung carcinoma cell line, A549 through in vitro wound healing and invasion assays. The biscoumarin scaffold was found to possess an effective anti-proliferative activity. It was also found to be efficient in ablating the migration and invasiveness of these cells under in vitro conditions. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

BIOACTIVITIES AND CHEMOPROFILING COMPARISONS OF CHENOPODIUM AMBROSIOIDES L. AND CHENOPODIUM BOTRYS L. GROWING IN KASHMIR, INDIA

Objectives: The objectives of the study were the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) identification and comparison of the chemical constituents, evaluation of the antifungal and anticancer activities of two species of genus Chenopodium, for example, Chenopodium ambrosioides (Ca) and Chenopodium botrys (Cb) growing in Kashmir, Himalayan region.Methods: The hydrodistilled essential oil of Ca and Cb was subjected to GC-MS analysis and antifungal activity for minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) determination against different human pathogenic fungal strains using broth microdilution assay in 96-well microtiter plates as per the protocol of the clinical and laboratory standards institute (2008 M27-A3). The anti-proliferative ability of the essential oils was also evaluated against the two cell lines MCF-7 (human mammary carcinoma cells) and A549 (Human lung adenocarcinoma epithelial cells).Results: A total of 34 compounds identified in Ca with α-terpinene (37.17%), isoascaridole (20.48%), and ascaridole (14.83%) as the key compounds. The key compounds of Cb were shyobunol (18.91%), and hedycaryol (9.51%), germacrene-D-4-ol (8.57%), with 65 identified compounds. Both the species were found to have comparable antifungal activities against human pathogenic fungi with MIC80 values in the range of 0.031 mg/ml– 0.256 mg/ml for Ca and 0.031 mg/ml–0.126 mg/ml in case of Cb. Maximum anti-proliferative activity was observed at 125 μg/ml concentration in A549 cell line, while as the oils inhibited the growth of MCF-7 cell line at a lower concentration of 31.25 μg/ml.Conclusion: The essential oils of Ca and Cb were found to have potent anticancer and antifungal activities and can have potential use as a natural fungicide

Facial expression recognition using lightweight deep learning modeling

Facial expression is a type of communication and is useful in many areas of computer vision, including intelligent visual surveillance, human-robot interaction and human behavior analysis. A deep learning approach is presented to classify happy, sad, angry, fearful, contemptuous, surprised and disgusted expressions. Accurate detection and classification of human facial expression is a critical task in image processing due to the inconsistencies amid the complexity, including change in illumination, occlusion, noise and the over-fitting problem. A stacked sparse auto-encoder for facial expression recognition (SSAE-FER) is used for unsupervised pre-training and supervised fine-tuning. SSAE-FER automatically extracts features from input images, and the softmax classifier is used to classify the expressions. Our method achieved an accuracy of 92.50% on the JAFFE dataset and 99.30% on the CK+ dataset. SSAE-FER performs well compared to the other comparative methods in the same domain

Elective cancer surgery in COVID-19-free surgical pathways during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: An international, multicenter, comparative cohort study

PURPOSE As cancer surgery restarts after the first COVID-19 wave, health care providers urgently require data to determine where elective surgery is best performed. This study aimed to determine whether COVID-19–free surgical pathways were associated with lower postoperative pulmonary complication rates compared with hospitals with no defined pathway. PATIENTS AND METHODS This international, multicenter cohort study included patients who underwent elective surgery for 10 solid cancer types without preoperative suspicion of SARS-CoV-2. Participating hospitals included patients from local emergence of SARS-CoV-2 until April 19, 2020. At the time of surgery, hospitals were defined as having a COVID-19–free surgical pathway (complete segregation of the operating theater, critical care, and inpatient ward areas) or no defined pathway (incomplete or no segregation, areas shared with patients with COVID-19). The primary outcome was 30-day postoperative pulmonary complications (pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, unexpected ventilation). RESULTS Of 9,171 patients from 447 hospitals in 55 countries, 2,481 were operated on in COVID-19–free surgical pathways. Patients who underwent surgery within COVID-19–free surgical pathways were younger with fewer comorbidities than those in hospitals with no defined pathway but with similar proportions of major surgery. After adjustment, pulmonary complication rates were lower with COVID-19–free surgical pathways (2.2% v 4.9%; adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.62; 95% CI, 0.44 to 0.86). This was consistent in sensitivity analyses for low-risk patients (American Society of Anesthesiologists grade 1/2), propensity score–matched models, and patients with negative SARS-CoV-2 preoperative tests. The postoperative SARS-CoV-2 infection rate was also lower in COVID-19–free surgical pathways (2.1% v 3.6%; aOR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.36 to 0.76). CONCLUSION Within available resources, dedicated COVID-19–free surgical pathways should be established to provide safe elective cancer surgery during current and before future SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks

Elective Cancer Surgery in COVID-19-Free Surgical Pathways During the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: An International, Multicenter, Comparative Cohort Study.

PURPOSE: As cancer surgery restarts after the first COVID-19 wave, health care providers urgently require data to determine where elective surgery is best performed. This study aimed to determine whether COVID-19-free surgical pathways were associated with lower postoperative pulmonary complication rates compared with hospitals with no defined pathway. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This international, multicenter cohort study included patients who underwent elective surgery for 10 solid cancer types without preoperative suspicion of SARS-CoV-2. Participating hospitals included patients from local emergence of SARS-CoV-2 until April 19, 2020. At the time of surgery, hospitals were defined as having a COVID-19-free surgical pathway (complete segregation of the operating theater, critical care, and inpatient ward areas) or no defined pathway (incomplete or no segregation, areas shared with patients with COVID-19). The primary outcome was 30-day postoperative pulmonary complications (pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, unexpected ventilation). RESULTS: Of 9,171 patients from 447 hospitals in 55 countries, 2,481 were operated on in COVID-19-free surgical pathways. Patients who underwent surgery within COVID-19-free surgical pathways were younger with fewer comorbidities than those in hospitals with no defined pathway but with similar proportions of major surgery. After adjustment, pulmonary complication rates were lower with COVID-19-free surgical pathways (2.2% v 4.9%; adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.62; 95% CI, 0.44 to 0.86). This was consistent in sensitivity analyses for low-risk patients (American Society of Anesthesiologists grade 1/2), propensity score-matched models, and patients with negative SARS-CoV-2 preoperative tests. The postoperative SARS-CoV-2 infection rate was also lower in COVID-19-free surgical pathways (2.1% v 3.6%; aOR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.36 to 0.76). CONCLUSION: Within available resources, dedicated COVID-19-free surgical pathways should be established to provide safe elective cancer surgery during current and before future SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks

Anti-Metastatic Propensity of Biscoumarin Scaffold Synthesized Under Catalyst Free Aqueous Phase Microwave Irradiation

An environmentally benign, catalyst free, aqueous phase, microwave assisted method for the synthesis of biscoumarin derivatives using 4-hydroxycoumarin and different aldehydes is reported. The comparative investigation of the same synthetic methodology under conventional refluxing, domestic and scientific programmable microwave synthesizer has been attempted for the purpose of comparing the reaction performance in terms of % yield, reaction time, reproducibility and reaction control. In addition to the increased yields and attenuated reaction times for biscoumarin synthesis, the difficulty of reaction control and result reproducibility usually encountered with domestic microwave ovens have been addressed through an optimized synthetic methodology using microwave synthesizer. Screening bioactive compounds for their propensity towards inhibition of cancer metastasis is a must step in advancement of cancer chemotherapy. The synthesized biscoumarin scaffold was investigated for inhibitory metastatic activity against human lung carcinoma cell line, A549 through in vitro wound healing and invasion assays. The biscoumarin scaffold was found to possess an effective anti-proliferative activity. It was also found to be efficient in ablating the migration and invasiveness of these cells under in vitro conditions. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License