Study of maternal and perinatal outcome of referred patients in tertiary health centre

Background: Referral services for identification and referral of high risk pregnancies are an integral part of maternal and child health services. The aim of this study was to review the pattern of obstetric cases referred to tertiary care center, to identify their clinical course, mode of delivery, maternal and perinatal outcomes.Methods: It is a prospective observational study carried out from January 2017 to July 2017. Study population was all Obstetrics patients referred to Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of B.J Medical College, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India a tertiary care center during the study period.Results: The total number of referred cases in above study period was 100. Mode of transport used by the referred patients was by 108 ambulances (75%) and private vehicles (25%). Most common diagnosis at the time of referral was hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (31%). Out of the total referred cases, 57% had vaginal delivery, 42% had caesarean section. Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy constitute the leading cause of maternal deaths amongst the referred cases.Conclusions: The present study has shown that inadequate antenatal and intra-natal care at the periphery level is responsible for increased maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. Even today, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy are the leading cause of maternal mortality. Health education to the community will definitely reduce maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality

Capacity Management of Intensive Care Units in a multi-specialty Hospital in India

In this paper, we describe the capacity management of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) in a 300-bed multi-specialty hospital where the alternative ICU is utilized when the appropriate ICU is full for a set of two types of ICUs. Inter-arrival time and service time distributions in these ICUs have been tested and found to be exponentially distributed. While most capacity management models are deterministic in nature, we have developed a queuing model to provide a basis for decision-making in the design and management of these ICUs. The model results in around 19800 linear steady state equations, which are solved using the CPLEX linear optimization solver. Based on real data available from a hospital in India, the results demonstrate that the utilization of the ICU beds will improve up to 28 percent when admissions to the alternative ICU are permitted.

Pressure-induced alpha-to-omega transition in titanium metal: A systematic study of the effects of uniaxial stress

We investigated the effects of uniaxial stress on the pressure-induced alpha-to-omega transition in pure titanium (Ti) by means of angle dispersive x-ray diffraction in a diamond-anvil cell. Experiments under four different pressure environments reveal that: (1) the onset of the transition depends on the pressure medium used, going from 4.9 GPa (no pressure medium) to 10.5 GPa (argon pressure medium); (2) the a and w phases coexist over a rather large pressure range, which depends on the pressure medium employed; (3) the hysteresis and quenchability of the w phase is affected by differences in the sample pressure environment; and (4) a short term laser-heating of Ti lowers the alpha-to-omega transition pressure. Possible transition mechanisms are discussed in the light of the present results, which clearly demonstrated the influence of uniaxial stress in the alpha-to-omega transition.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl

Pressure-induced superconductivity in the giant Rashba system BiTeI

At ambient pressure, BiTeI is the first material found to exhibit a giant Rashba splitting of the bulk electronic bands. At low pressures, BiTeI undergoes a transition from trivial insulator to topological insulator. At still higher pressures, two structural transitions are known to occur. We have carried out a series of electrical resistivity and AC magnetic susceptibility measurements on BiTeI at pressure up to ~40 GPa in an effort to characterize the properties of the high-pressure phases. A previous calculation found that the high-pressure orthorhombic P4/nmm structure BiTeI is a metal. We find that this structure is superconducting with Tc values as high as 6 K. AC magnetic susceptibility measurements support the bulk nature of the superconductivity. Using electronic structure and phonon calculations, we compute Tc and find that our data is consistent with phonon-mediated superconductivity.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure