Management of Tuberculosis - The Need to Enforce Proper Treatment Guidelines among Private Practitioners in India

Tuberculosis continues to be a daunting challenge for our healthcare system. Even after fifteen years of the much publicised Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme that envisages directly observed short course chemotherapy (DOTS), TB continues to spread and drug resistant strains, MDR and XDR, are also increasingly reported. More than 50% of TB patients seeking private health care, but the level of awareness regarding treatment of TB among private practitioners appears to be poor. All this call for an urgent revamp of TB control strategy in India

Community Detection: Statistical Inference Models

Community detection in large networks through the methods based on the statistical inference model can identify the node community as well as find the interaction between the communities. Statistical inference based methods try to fit a generative model to the network data. This paper discusses the statistical inference methods which groups the communities on vertices or nodes

The Last Burden by Upamanyu Chatterjee: A Realistic Criticism on the Degeneration and Changing Values of the Younger Generation

The Last Burden (1993) is the second novel from the prolific literary pen of Upamanyu Chatterjee followed by ‘English August: An Indian Story’ (1988). ‘The Hindu’ spoke very highly of the novel as it writes, ‘’‘The Last Burden’ is one of the most honest novels of Chatterjee’s generation.’’1 The novel deals with the suffering and obstacle as faced by the contemporary middle class Indian families in day to day life on the realistic front. It broadly highlights the burden which has rather become unbearable for most of the Indian middle class families living in all kind of background

Intracardiac Calcification - An Interesting Chest X-ray Report.

We report a case of chest X-ray finding of mitral annular calcification. Mitral annular calcification is a degenerative process involving the fibrous annulus of the mitral valve. It is generally an incidental finding associated with aging and atherosclerosis. It may lead to significant mitral regurgitation and can rarely cause symptomatic mitral stenosis. In addition, mitral annulus calcification may be associated with atrial fibrillation and cardiac arrhythmia. Calcification of mitral annulus in the chest X-ray generally follows the C-shape of the mitral annulus. Confirmation is by echocardiography. Symptomatic cases require repair by surgery

Acculturation and oral health in Mexican women

Objective: Oral health disparities such as periodontitis and untreated tooth decay are more profound in the Mexican population. Research evidence suggests, acculturation positively affects oral health in Mexican men and children. Yet the effect of acculturation on the oral health of Mexican women remains unknown. The objective of this research is to examine the impact of acculturation on oral health (i.e., periodontitis and decayed teeth) among Mexican American and Mexican immigrant women. Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of cross-sectional data from 2014-15, 2015-16, and 2017-18 cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The sample included 1018 Hispanic women. We used crude and adjusted logistic regression models to examine the association among acculturation (measured by the length of stay in the United States, language spoken at home, and race) and oral health (measured by rates of periodontitis, decayed teeth, self-rated oral hygiene, and the date of last dental visit). Results: The crude statistical model showed that Mexican women (Mexican immigrants and Mexican American) residing in the United States for more than 5 years had higher odds (B = 2.29 p <. 05) of decayed teeth and a lower likelihood of periodontitis than Mexican women residing in the United States for less than 5 years. Mexican American women have a lower likelihood (B = 0.99, p <. 05) of periodontitis and decayed teeth (B = 0.78, p <. 05) than Non-American Mexican women. Mexican American women self-rated their tooth and gum health 1.84 times poorer than non-Mexican American women. Mexican American women had 0.56 higher odds of utilizing dental services than Non-American Mexican women. Spanish-speaking Mexican women utilized dental services less (B = 0.46) than English-speaking Mexican women, and Mexican women who are residing in the U.S for more than 5 years utilize dental services more than Mexican women who are residing in the U.S for less than 5 years. Mexican American women (B = 1.56, p <. 05) had more frequent dental visits than Mexican non-American women. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest a significant positive association between length of stay in the United States and decayed teeth and periodontitis among Mexican women. Future studies should examine the factors that contribute to better oral health among Mexican women residing in the United States

Expanding the scope of practice for advance practice registered nurses in the Veterans Administration: a physician’s perspective

There is wide consensus among the US healthcare professionals regarding the vital role of advanced practice nurse practitioners (APRNs) in healthcare delivery. However, the best way to achieve a formalized integration of APRNs with autonomous role in primary care is heavily contested. Increasing primary care and preventive health focus promoted by the Affordable Care Act (ACA 2010) has made this integration even more imperative due to shortage in primary care workforce. as well as non-uniform geographical distribution of primary care physicians. This has renewed the focus on the APRN scope of practice, despite numerous publications advocating equity of care delivery by APRNs. The established physician groups favor a collaborative/supervised model with limited scope of practice. As the stakeholders argue about the details of the final rule on nurse autonomy, collaborative patient centric care model delivered by blended health care teams is garnering increasing support. The ACA has bolstered this primary care model by rolling out provisions to enhance the nursing role in primary care and proposed bundled payment systems that provide the perfect framework for this change. In 2016 the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is beginning to implement expanded scope of practice for APRNs to streamline its patient-centric medical home (PCMH) model of care This essay is a focused assessment of the background and potential implications of full practice authority for nurse practitioners in the primary care setting in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). This topic is of immense public health significance as the demand for primary care services in the United States is expected to increase over the next few years, particularly with the aging and growth of the population and passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). VHA, a large public health organization, is not immune to these increasing demands for primary care. Research suggests that NPs and other health professionals are trained to deliver many primary care services and may therefore be able to help increase access to primary care, particularly in underserved areas. VHA has taken the lead in formalizing the APRN role and identifying it as pivotal to meeting increasing healthcare delivery demands it currently faces. This essay attempts to analyze this major policy change in its historical and current perspective

In Vitro Comparative Study of Antioxidant and Antibacterial Activity of Selected Dietary Plants

Ethanolic extracts of Garlic (Bulb), Aloe (leaf), Flower bud (buds), Turmeric (rhizomes) and Ginger (rhizomes) were used for relative analysis of antioxidant and antimicrobial activity. Antioxidant activity was determined by DPPH [1, 1-Diphenyl-2-picryl hydrazyl] assay and expressed with Ascorbic acid. It was observed that turmeric and ginger have more antioxidant activity than garlic, Aloe and Flower bud. These extracts were further studied for antibacterial activity by agar well diffusion and spectrophotometric method against tetracycline as reference. The result showed that Flower bud is more effective against Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeuroginosa, Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus compared to other plants extract. However, all the plants extract did show antioxidant and antibacterial activity

Optimisation of Flight and Maintenance Planning for Defence Aviation with Modified Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

The planning of flight operations and maintenance is a crucial activity for both commercial and military aircraft. Military aircraft have to be always mission-ready. The task of ensuring this can become quite challenging when several operational requirements and maintenance constraints are to be fulfilled simultaneously. This paper, therefore, addresses the optimisation of flight and maintenance planning (FMP) when several diverse factors such as aircraft flying hours (AFH), flight cycles (FC), calendar life, annual flying requirement (AFR), etc. are to be factored in. Such a problem has not been considered previously. Because the problem can become unwieldy to solve by other methods, two schemes, that is, the genetic algorithm (GA) and modified artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm for constrained optimisation have been utilised. The objective is to maximise the utilisation rate (UR) of aircraft, while also satisfying other operational and maintenance constraints. The algorithm is tested on a fleet of eight aircraft. In addition to a one-year planning period, a planning horizon of ten years has also been simulated. The results show that both the GA and modified ABC algorithm can be effectively used to solve the FMP problem