The educational use of social networking sites among medical and health sciences students : a cross campus interventional study

Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to all students who actively participated in both phases of the study and provided valuable data for this research. Funding None.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Giant Mesenteric Cyst

Mesenteric cysts are uncommon benign abdominal lesions with no classical clinical features. The preoperative diagnosis requires the common imaging modalities but the final diagnosis is established only during surgery or histological analysis. The treatment of choice is complete surgical excision. We report an 18- year-old female with a non-specific abdominal pain and discomfort since 3 weeks. Her CT scan showed a huge cystic swelling, which necessitated surgical exploration. Preoperatively, a giant cyst was encountered with displacement of bowel loops. The cyst was completely removed and histology report confirmed mesenteric cyst without evidence of malignancy

Health-Related Quality of Life of Patients Treated with Biological Agents and New Small-Molecule Drugs for Moderate to Severe Crohn’s Disease: A Systematic Review

Crohn’s disease (CD) leads to a poor health-related quality of life (HRQoL). This review aimed to investigate the effect of biological agents and small-molecule drugs in improving the HRQoL of patients with moderate to severe CD. We adopted a systematic protocol to search PubMed and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), which was supplemented with manual searches. Eligible studies were RCTs that matched the research objective based on population, intervention, comparison and outcomes. Studies in paediatric populations, reviews and conference abstracts were excluded. Covidence was used for screening and data extraction. We assessed all research findings using RoB2 and reported them narratively. We included 16 multicentre, multinational RCTs in this review. Of the 15 studies that compared the effect of an intervention to a placebo, 9 were induction studies and 6 investigated maintenance therapy. Of these, 13 studies showed a significant (p < 0.05) improvement in the HRQoL of patients with CD. One non-inferiority study compared the intervention with another active drug and favoured the intervention. This systematic review reported a substantial improvement in the HRQoL of patients with CD using biological agents and small-molecule drugs. These pharmaceutical substances have the potential to improve the HRQoL of patients with CD. However, further large clinical trials with long-term follow-up are essential to validate these findings

The effectiveness of interprofessional education in healthcare: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Interprofessional education (IPE) emphasizes collaborative practice that aims at promoting the working relationships between two or more healthcare professions. However, there is paucity of literature about the effectiveness of IPE program in the healthcare. This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to objectively determine the effectiveness of IPE in that field in terms of the improvement of students' knowledge, skills and attitudes. The databases of OVID, ISI Knowledge of Science, and Medline (PubMed) were searched for the full-text English language articles published during 2000–2016 using the MeSH terms “interprofessional education” AND “healthcare professionals” AND “multi-professional” AND “impact” AND “effectiveness” OR “collaborative practice” OR “medical students” in Endnote X7. A systematic search finally selected 12 articles for detailed review and meta-analysis. The effect summary value of 1.37 with confidence interval of 0.92–1.82 identifies statistically significant effectiveness of intervention by IPE program in healthcare. The Z test value of 5.99, significant at 5% level of significance, also shows a significant impact of IPE intervention as calculated by the random-effects model. This meta-analysis shows a positive impact and effectiveness of educational intervention by IPE program in various disciplines of healthcare. However, analysis of further clinical trials may be helpful in identifying the effect of IPE program on the students’ clinical competence

Serum markers as better predictors than Ranson, Imrie, and APACHE II systems in identifying the severity of acute pancreatitis

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the predictability of various scoring systems and serum markers in the assessment of the severity of acute pancreatitis. All consecutive patients with acute pancreatitis were prospectively studied. Body mass index was measured at the time of admission. The demographic data, etiology, mean hospital; stay, clinical, radiological, biochemical findings, morbidity, and mortality were recorded. The relations between these parameters, scoring systems (Ranson, APACHE II, Imrie, and various serum markers) and patients' outcome were determined by using appropriate tests. Ninety seven (fifty men and forty seven women) patients were incorporated in the study; mean age was 51 years. Biliary pancreatitis was the most common etiological factor, followed by idiopathic pancreatitis (60 and 29%, respectively). Seventy (72%) patients had severe pancreatitis and 27 (28%) cases had mild disease. Ranson (p=0.2), Glasgow (p=0.4), and APACHE II (p=0.5) appeared insignificant predictors of the severity of acute pancreatitis by multivariate analysis. More reliable serum markers were pancreatic amylase (p ≤ 0.001), neutrophil elastase (p ≤ 0.001), serum albumin (p ≤ 0.02), and C-reactive protein (p ≤ 0.001). Results turned out to be more homogenous when CT scan findings were added together. Not a single parameter achieved statistically significant predictive value when used alone. Ranson, Imrie score, and APACHE II are not accurate predictors of the severity of acute pancreatitis. Serum markers are better predictors to elucidate the severity of disease