Corneal Dermoid

A 20 years old boy presented with left corneal mass. The mass involved entire cornea extending to the sclera. The mass had a skin like surface and protruded outside the palpebral aperture. The eye with the mass was excised .The histopathology report confirmed the diagnosis of corneal dermoid. This late presentation of huge corneal dermoid extending to sclera is first such report in the literature

Over the counter ophthalmic drug misuse, are we aware?

Aim: To investigate the misuse of ‘over the counter’ ophthalmic medications in our city. Method: Responses of a structured questionnaire covering various aspects of over the counter drug use was obtained from pharmacy workers in and around our city. Results: Eighty nine pharmacy workers took part in this cross–sectional study. An average number of seven patients per day with ophthalmic complaints were seen by the pharmacy workers. Dispensing over the counter was practiced by 89.9% of the pharmacists. The most common complaint of the patients visiting the pharmacy, was redness and itching (86.5%). Antibiotics (96.6%) were the most common eye drops dispensed over the counter, followed by steroids (55.1%), decongestants (54.1%), antibiotic-steroid combination eye drops (29.2%) and lubricants (16.8%). Awareness regarding complications of steroid use was seen in 40.6% of pharmacists. 6.7% pharmacists had seen patients with complications following use of over the counter medications. In our study, majority of the eye drops dispensed were prescription drugs. Conclusion: Availability of prescription eye drops over the counter is an immense public threat. Educating the pharmacist and the population can decrease ocular morbidity. Research into methods to effectively deal with over-the-counter drug misuse is required and law can be enforced based on the findings

Analysis of Facial Expressions with Respect to Navarasas in Bharathanatym Styles Using Image Processing

Facial expression analysis with respect to Bharathanatyam a classical dance style of south India is studied in this paper by using image processing techniques and several properties associated with the face are taken into consideration. The emotional changes result in the changes in the facial expression. Accordingly the curvatures developed on the face and the dimensions of the objects on the face such as eyebrows, lips and the area of the mouth also change. Naturally there exist changes in the intensity of the pixels corresponding to these objects. The natural eyes can distinguish these sharp changes in both the cases and understand the facial expressions. The experimental results predicted a definite change in every trail. These results can also be used as a tool to design intelligent system which recognizes different emotions of people in different environment. The results are found to be of immense scientific and psychological interest

Lehya formulations for mother and child care in Havyak community of Uttara Kannada district, Karnataka, India

The period between pregnancy and the child birth is a critical phase in the lives of mothers and newborn babies. In most of the Asian countries including India, the use of medicinal plants, cultural traditions and the diets practiced by the ethnic groups have their age old histories. Present study was carried out to compile the traditional knowledge of the age old practitioners on pre and postnatal remedies. The survey was carried out in the areas of Sirsi, Siddapur and Mundgod taluks of Uttara Kannada district, Karnataka state, India. Medicinal plants were collected and quantitative data analyses like Use Value (UV), Relative frequency citation (Rfc) and Family Importance Value (FIV) have been provided to analyze the importance of reported plants. The study revealed the use of 28 plant species belonging to 19 families. The home remedies for pregnant women are in the form of paste, called ‘Lehya’ in local language. Habit-wise analysis of the plants indicate that herbs are highly used (35.71%) and in most of the case fruits (32.14%) and seeds (25%) are frequently used plant parts in ‘Lehya’ preparation. The most important plant species according to the quantitative data analysis are Cassia sophera, Centella asiatica, Cocos nucifera, Cucumis melo var. acidulus, Curcuma longa, Phoenix dactylifera and Syzygium aromaticum