Impact of coronavirus on pregnant females in India: an observational study

Background: Coronavirus (COVID-19) has emerged as a rampant pandemic and the entire world is struggling against it. The entire nations are trying to device measure like national lockdowns, diverting resources towards fighting coronavirus, extensive media coverage, closing of elective services in hospitals. All this has influences the masses to a deep level. Coronavirus not only is morbid for the sick, but also the healthy pregnant females seeking health care and impacted them more mentally than physically.Methods: In this study 103 pregnant females from the entire nation of India were made to answer a well thought and made questionnaire which aimed at assessing the mental state and impact of coronavirus on the pregnant females.Results: Majority of the females answered that they felt anxious and were undergoing stress due to the coronavirus. They fear impending doom for the child and also are struggling a lot to seek apt healthcare for themselves and their children because of the ongoing pandemic.Conclusions: Coronavirus has not only affected people who are directly affected with the virus, but also who are still not affected but are mentally stressed because of it. National lockdown and alteration in the healthcare services are also stress- inducing for the pregnant females

Holt-Oram syndrome: a rare case report

Holt-Oram syndrome is an inherited disorder that causes abnormalities of the hands, arms and heart. The diagnosis can be established clinically. The diagnostic criteria have been validated with molecular testing. An upper-limb malformation involving the carpal bone(s) and, variably, the radial and/or thenar bones-An abnormal carpal bone, present in all affected individuals and identified by performing a posterior-anterior hand x-ray, may be the only evidence of disease. 24 years unbooked Hindu female G2P1+0 presented in OPD at term. Her USG examination showed-small deformed upper limbs with poorly appreciable upper limb skeleton. Induction of labour was done and patient delivered vaginally a female baby with deformed upper limbs. This case emphasizes the importance of proper history taking (family history), early diagnosis of such anomalies and proper counseling the parents

Study of TH 1 and TH 2 activity in women with threatened miscarriages

Background: Successful pregnancy is associated with T helper-type 2 (Th2) immunity and is helpful in maintaining pregnancy, while T helper type-1 (Th1) activity is responsible for deleterious effects.Methods: The study comprised of two groups: Group I- Threatened abortions in first trimester (n=60) subdivided in two groups: 1 N- one who continued pregnancy (n=38), and another, 1A- who aborted (n=22), and Group II- 40 pregnant women in first trimester who later delivered at term without any history of abortion in the past. Blood was collected and analyzed for IL-2 and IL-6 by ELISA kit.Results: Th1 activity (IL-2) was higher in threatened abortion group irrespective of whether continuing their pregnancy or aborting in comparison to control (p <0.001). On the other hand, Th2 activity (IL6) was decreased    (p <0.001) in both the groups of threatened abortions.Conclusions: The patients with threatened abortion have a definite increase in Th1 activity and decrease in Th2 activity whether aborting or continuing their pregnancy in comparison to normal pregnant women without any history of spontaneous abortion in the past

Uterosacral ligament fibroid: a rare occurrence yet a major diagnostic challenge

Fibroid is a common benign neoplasm more often located in the uterus and less commonly seen in the adnexa and other supporting structures of uterus like broad and uterosacral ligament. The incidence of extra uterine leiomyomas is &lt;1%. A 48-year-old female para one live one presented with chief complaints of mass per abdomen for 2 years and prolonged heavy bleeding for 15 days. Based on the clinical and radiological findings, a diagnosis of tubo-ovarian mass was made. The patient underwent staging laparotomy. However, intraoperatively, she was diagnosed with uterosacral ligament fibroid of size approximately 40×45 cm. Total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy was done. There was no associated complication. Histopathology confirmed the mass to be leiomyoma. Uterosacral ligament fibroid is encountered very rarely. Our case report intends to bring to light the necessity of keeping the various possible locations of leiomyoma in mind and in considering adnexal mass as an important differential diagnosis of leiomyoma and vice-versa before operating. Leiomyoma is often confused with ovarian mass or neoplasm posing a diagnostic difficulty to a gynaecologist as well as radiologist thereby posing a challenge to the operating surgeon while performing surgery

A rare case report on complete cervical agenesis with vaginal atresia and suspended didelphys uterus with hematometra and left haematosalpinx

Congenital uterine malformations are deviations from normal anatomy resulting due to defective fusion of Mullerian ducts or the paramesonephric ducts in the developing embryo. These anomalies may be isolated or in combination with urological abnormalities. The mean prevalence of female congenital malformations in general population is up to ⁓ 7%. Patients with these anomalies usually present during pubertal age due to absence of onset of menses, cyclical abdominal pain, or in reproductive age group as infertility or recurrent pregnancy loss depending upon the degree of malformation. Cervical agenesis is a rare Mullerian anomaly with an incidence of 1 in 80,000 females. It represents 3% of all uterine anomalies. It is rarely associated with a functioning uterus (4.8%). Cervical agenesis is often associated with vaginal atresia (less than 50%). It is important to classify these anomalies for easy diagnosis and plan appropriate preoperative treatment

Long term management challenges in diabetic patients with rhino-orbito-cerebral mucormycosis

There has been a recent upsurge in prevalence of diabetes mellitus in developing world. This has resulted in exponential increase in the incidence of both communicable and non-communicable diseases. Some of the infections increase morbidity and mortality associated with diabetes. Rhino-orbital-cerebral mucormycosis (ROCM) is one of the fatal opportunistic infections in diabetes. There is little data published regarding the short and long term management of patients suffering from this invasive fungal infection. Hereby, we report few cases of ROCM with varied presentations and their short and long term follow up. These patients were initially treated with injectable amphotericin B and later followed up with oral posaconazole

Transient Analysis of Photonic Networks

The behavior of slotted aloha protocol for a star-coupled Wavelength Division Multiple Access (WDMA) photonic network is studied. Semi-markov process is used for developing the steady state and transient models for the protocol. The performance of the network is evaluated in terms of various measures viz. average number of packets in the network, throughput of the network and average packet delay etc. The analytical models are validated by evaluating the numerical values of the performance indices, which are further compared by using Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) approach. Keywords:Photonic networks, Slotted aloha, Semi-markov process, Neuro-fuzzy systems, Throughput.

Adaptive batching scheme for multicast near video-on-demand (nvod) system

Video-on-Demand is becoming most sought after multimedia applications. It is difficult to attain a true video-on-demand (TVOD) system, so near video-on-demand (NVOD) is catching the attention of people. In NVOD, requests are multicast in different streams. Important issue in this system is the choice of batching time. Traditionally the batching time is fixed depending on the number of requests. In this paper we have suggested an adaptive batching scheme (ABS) where batching time is adjusted according to the current arrival rate, which follows the hyper-exponential distribution pattern. A comparison is made between the fixed and adaptive batching schemes. Numerical illustrations are provided to show that adaptive batching policy is better than fixed batching policy for optimizing bandwidth requirements

Four years’ maternal mortality updates of a high referral burden teaching hospital of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India

Background: Maternal mortality is still a major challenge in developing countries but in our hospital, it touches the extreme height of MMR. The target of the study is to assess the cause of maternal mortality at Sir Sunder Lal Hospital, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India.Methods: Data collection was done from the patient maternal mortality records of hospital between 2013 to 2016. Study comprises only maternal mortality cases. Total 165 maternal deaths were included in this study.Results: Maternal mortality ratio is extremely high as compare to other studies. In an increasing trend, in the year 2015 MMR was highest. Moreover, we found direct causes accounted 77.5% of total maternal deaths Hypertensive disorders and eclampsia is the most frequent cause of deaths which represented 33.3%. We found a trend of increased MMR with Increased unbooked cases. 21.2% of total dead women couldn’t get beds in ICU because of not vacancy of beds and 18.8% of total women died due to non-affordability of ICU expenses.Conclusions: Our hospital is a high burden referral apex centre of eastern Utter Pradesh in India which experience mostly referred cases from the periphery. PPH and hypertensive disorder are two major causes which lead to deaths. Cardiovascular dysfunction is most accounted for deaths. Mostly patients were needed ventilatory support to survive but lack of separate ICU and improper antenatal visits leads to MMR higher. However, many other factors like ill-literacy, poor transportation, poor referral note, poor socio-demographic status should be dealt to incline the MMR.

Gender Related Effects of Co-Operative Learning Strategies (Stad And Tai) on Mathematics Achievement

The purpose of this study was to determine how the adoption of cooperative learning as an instructional strategy for teaching mathematics influences students’ achievement. The study also determined how moderating variables like gender affect students’ achievement in mathematics when cooperative learning is used as an instructional strategy. so, the investigators aimed at studying the effect of co-operative learning strategies i.e. team assisted individualisation (TAI) and student teams achievement division (STAD) on the mathematics achievement among ninth graders in relation to gender. This is an experimental study with 3x2 factorial designs. Students of ninth standard of the schools affiliated to Haryana Board in Rohtak city constituted the population of the study. 144 students of ninth standard ( 74 boys and 70 girls ) selected through multi-stage random sampling technique were taken as a sample for the study out of which 52 students taught through TAI formed experimental group-1 (E1 ); 46 students taught through STAD formed experimental group-2(E2) and 46 students taught through conventional method of teaching formed control group(C ). Sample of the students were also equated on the basis of socio-economic status and achievement in the subject concerned. Achievement test in mathematics developed and standardized by the investigators was used to assess the achievement of the subjects. Lesson plans, worksheets, check-outs and formative tests were developed for both the strategies TAI and STAD separately to carry out the teaching and learning process in all the three groups for ten weeks only. At the end of the experiment, achievement test in mathematics was given to the subjects. Data were analyzed by using ANOVA and t-test to determine the performance by comparing the mean scores of all the groups. Data analysis revealed that boys and girls students taught through co-operative learning strategies TAI and STAD outscored significantly the control group on post-test showing the obvious supremacy of co-operative learning over conventional method of teaching. Hence, the ultimate result of the study indicated that co-operative learning was found more effective instructional paradigm for mathematics as compared to conventional method of teaching