Genetic study in congenital heart defects

Background: Congenital heart diseases (CHD) are relatively common with a prevalence ranging from 3.7 to 17.5 per 1000 live births. Little is known about genetic link with respect to congenital heart disease. Iroquoise (Irx) homeobox genes have been widely studied and their expression in both developing and adult heart. Author tried to study the role of irx4 and irx5 genes in structural congenital heart disease, keeping the focus on study reported by Cheng Z et al.Methods: Author studied reported mutation site sequences in 25 various congenital heart disease patients and control healthy relatives of patients. It is a unique study and there has not been such a study reported in literature till date. Besides comparison with healthy related controls, author took cardiac tissue biopsy in patients while doing corrective cardiac surgery. However, blood samples were taken from controls due to ease of feasibility.Results: Although, there were no sequence variations in the studied exon regions, but author got a base pair sequence change at 6 bp intron region, which is near the exon splice site in irx4 gene. Besides two ASD patient’s male children (one child each) had ASD prompting us to believe some role of sex linkage. However later needs pedigree analysis and sex chromosome studies for further analysis.Conclusions: Gene sequence in the Kashmiri population is unique. There is possibility of role of irx genes in CHD. ASD might have sex linkage in some

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

First Hybrid 1gbps/0.1 Gbps Free-space Optical /rf System Deployment And Testing In The State Of Qatar

I.BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Owing to its high-bandwidth, robustness to EMI, and operation in unregulated spectrum, free-space optical communication (FSO) is uniquely qualified as a promising alternative or complementary technology to fiber optic and wireless radio-frequency (RF) links. Despite the vibrant advantages of FSO technology and the variety of its applications, its widespread adoption has been hampered by rather disappointing link reliability for long-range links due to atmospheric turbulence-induced fading and sensitivity to detrimental climate conditions. A major challenge of such hybrid systems is to provide a strong backup system with soft-switching capabilities when the FSO link becomes down. The specific objective of this work is to study for the first time in Qatar and the GCC the link capacity, link availability, and link outage of an FSO system with RF back up (i.e. hybrid FSO/RF) under harsh environment. II.METHODS In this work, a practical demonstration of hybrid FSO/RF link system is shown. The system has a capacity of 1 Gbps and 100 Mbps for FSO and RF, respectively. It is installed in Qatar University at two different buildings 600 m away and 20 feet high. This system is basically a point-to-point optical link that uses Infrared laser lights to wirelessly transmit data. Moreover, the proposed system has capability to make parallel transmission between links. In order to analyze the two transport media, we used the tool IPERF. This Java based GUI (jperf) application can either act as a server or client, and is available on a variety of platforms. We have tested end-to-end throughput by running IPERF tool in server mode on one Laptop and in client mode on another. III.RESULTS Figure1 shows a block diagram of the system used. Initial results were obtained for the two links under same climatic and environmental conditions, where the average ambient temperature reached 50°C and RH above 80% (July-August 2014). Both FSO and RF links allowed transfer rates of around 80% of their full capacity. During all experiments while running both links simultaneously, there was no FSO link failure. In case of an FSO failure, the RF is expected to back up within 2 seconds (hard switching), which might cause a loss of data. Detailed results on FSO-to-RF switching and induced packet loss will be reported in the full manuscript and during the presentation. IV.CONCLUSION Tests on FSO/RF link have been carried for the first time in Qatar. Initial results showed that both FSO and RF links operated close to their capacity. During summer, Qatari weather did not induce FSO link outage. The team is focusing on developing a seamless FSO-RF soft switching using NetFPGA boards and raptor coding.qscienc

Carcinoma lung: Clinical presentation, diagnosis, and its surgical management

The aim of this article is to review the surgical management of lung carcinoma. Lung cancer is the most common cancer in the world, and a leading cause of death in men and women. By any conventional measure, the enormity of this global problem is immense. In some countries incidence and mortality rates have peaked and are beginning to decline. In many developing nations, the burden of disease is rising and will continue to rise because of aggressive tobacco industry marketing which is leading to a growing prevalence of cigarette smoking. This is also one of the major causes of cancer deaths in our Kashmir valley. The method of literature search was from articles published in PubMed and Google Scholar

Design and Characterization of Compact Broadband Antenna and Its MIMO Configuration for 28 GHz 5G Applications

This paper presents the design and characterization of a compact broadband antenna and its MIMO configuration for 28 GHz 5G applications. The antenna was designed using Rogers RT/5880 with a thickness of 1.575 mm and has an overall compact size of 30 mm × 30 mm. The design methodology was initiated by designing a compact conventional microstrip antenna for 28 GHz. Afterward, the rectangular slots were utilized to improve the impedance bandwidth so that antenna covers the globally allocated 28 GHz band spectrum for 5G applications. Furthermore, a compact 2 × 2 MIMO antenna with polarization diversity is designed for high channel capacity systems. The mutual coupling between the closely spaced antenna elements is reduced by using two consecutive iterations of defected ground structure (DGS). The proposed MIMO antenna system offers broad bandwidth, high gain, low mutual coupling, and low envelope correlation coefficient along with high diversity gain, low mean effective gain, and low channel capacity loss. Moreover, the proposed been compared with the state-of-the-art MIMO antenna proposed for 28 GHz application to demonstrate worth of the presented design

Design and Characterization of Compact Broadband Antenna and Its MIMO Configuration for 28 GHz 5G Applications

This paper presents the design and characterization of a compact broadband antenna and its MIMO configuration for 28 GHz 5G applications. The antenna was designed using Rogers RT/5880 with a thickness of 1.575 mm and has an overall compact size of 30 mm × 30 mm. The design methodology was initiated by designing a compact conventional microstrip antenna for 28 GHz. Afterward, the rectangular slots were utilized to improve the impedance bandwidth so that antenna covers the globally allocated 28 GHz band spectrum for 5G applications. Furthermore, a compact 2 × 2 MIMO antenna with polarization diversity is designed for high channel capacity systems. The mutual coupling between the closely spaced antenna elements is reduced by using two consecutive iterations of defected ground structure (DGS). The proposed MIMO antenna system offers broad bandwidth, high gain, low mutual coupling, and low envelope correlation coefficient along with high diversity gain, low mean effective gain, and low channel capacity loss. Moreover, the proposed been compared with the state-of-the-art MIMO antenna proposed for 28 GHz application to demonstrate worth of the presented design

Characteristics and outcomes of COVID-19 patients admitted to hospital with and without respiratory symptoms

Background: COVID-19 is primarily known as a respiratory illness; however, many patients present to hospital without respiratory symptoms. The association between non-respiratory presentations of COVID-19 and outcomes remains unclear. We investigated risk factors and clinical outcomes in patients with no respiratory symptoms (NRS) and respiratory symptoms (RS) at hospital admission. Methods: This study describes clinical features, physiological parameters, and outcomes of hospitalised COVID-19 patients, stratified by the presence or absence of respiratory symptoms at hospital admission. RS patients had one or more of: cough, shortness of breath, sore throat, runny nose or wheezing; while NRS patients did not. Results: Of 178,640 patients in the study, 86.4 % presented with RS, while 13.6 % had NRS. NRS patients were older (median age: NRS: 74 vs RS: 65) and less likely to be admitted to the ICU (NRS: 36.7 % vs RS: 37.5 %). NRS patients had a higher crude in-hospital case-fatality ratio (NRS 41.1 % vs. RS 32.0 %), but a lower risk of death after adjusting for confounders (HR 0.88 [0.83-0.93]). Conclusion: Approximately one in seven COVID-19 patients presented at hospital admission without respiratory symptoms. These patients were older, had lower ICU admission rates, and had a lower risk of in-hospital mortality after adjusting for confounders