Audit of Open Pediatric Tracheostomies at the University College Hospital, Ibadan

Background: Tracheostomy is the creation of a communication between the trachea and the overlying skin, maintained by a tube. This is done either by an open or percutaneous technique. Anatomical and physiological variation of the paediatric trachea and adjoining structures necessitates finite skills and consistent competence in performing pediatric tracheostomies, lack of which may cause higher mortality and morbidity outcome in tracheostomies in the pediatric age group. Objectives: There are inadequate local data on the outcomes of pediatric tracheostomies; therefore, we conducted a local audit of pediatric tracheostomy to describe our experience. Methods: A retrospective study of pediatric patients who had tracheostomies from June 2011 to December 2017 was done. Results: Thirty‑four patients were identified, all of whom had an open tracheostomy. The age range was 3 weeks to 16 years; M: F ratio was 2.4:1. Indications for surgery were obstructive (88.2%) and prolonged‑assisted intubation (11.8%). Recurrent respiratory papillomatosis, retropharyngeal abscess, and foreign‑body aspiration were the main obstructive causes. Three patients (8.8%) had repeat procedures, and these patients were initially discharged on tracheostomy tube and instructions were given for home care. Conclusion: Despite the evolving local challenges peculiar to clinical practice in developing countries, the outcome of pediatric tracheostomy in our hospital is good. Keywords: Audit, pediatric, tracheostom

Mothers’ perspectives of newborn hearing screening programme

Background: Newborn hearing screening programs identifies newborns with hearing loss. The early identification enables prompt intervention through hearing rehabilitation. Accurate knowledge of the program and its benefit will impact on the uptake of the program by the citizenry. We hypothesized that there is a gap in the knowledge of parents on hearing screening and rehabilitation measures in Nigeria.Aim: To determine the knowledge and perceptions of mothers of newborn children on hearing screening.Methods: A cross sectional observational study among mothers of newborn children at immunization clinics. Semi structured questionnaire on gestational duration, mode of delivery, birth asphyxia, knowledge on hearing loss and newborn hearing screening were administered.Results: Participants were 48 mothers with age range from 18 to 42 years. Awareness of newborn hearing screening was poor among the mothers; sources of information on newborn hearing screening were antenatal clinic, mass media and friends. The educational level of the participants had no association with awareness (p = 0.11), but the willingness to accept newborn hearing screening, was associated with socioeconomic status (p = 0.04) and the level of education (p = 0.02). The participants were not aware of factors responsible for hearing loss in childhood.Conclusion: There is inadequate knowledge about newborn hearing screening and risk factors for infant hearing loss among the mothers, though they demonstrate willingness to accept the newborn hearing screening. Funding: None declaredKeywords: Hearing loss, hearing screening, immunization, mother, newbor

Readiness of Nigerian Health‑Care Workers to Work during COVID‑19 Pandemic

Introduction: Health‑care professionals of all cadres are the utmost valuable resource during pandemics and maintaining an adequateworkforce of health professionals during an emergency is critical to ensure uninterrupted provision of services that are essential for patient care. Aim: Examine readiness of health‑care workers (HCWs) to provide service in the course of the COVID‑19 pandemic and the factors influencing their decision. Methodology: This was a cross‑sectional study of Nigerian health sector workers HCWs in the course of the COVID‑19 pandemic. The respondents were recruited using HCWs focus groups on WhatsApp and Telegram social medial platforms. Results: A total of 481 HCWs were recruited, consisting of 288 females and 193 males (M: F, 1:1.5), mean age = 30.71 ± 5.9 years. MostHCWs (97.3%) showed a willingness to provide service during the pandemic; 73.3% of the HCWs were willing to work if supplied with adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) although 5.8% were less willing to work without proper PPE. Factors supporting  unwillingness to work during the pandemic were: concerns about the lack of adequate testing for COVID‑19 (48.9%), lack of disability insurance plan (40.1%), fear of being infected (47.2%), and the risk of infection in family members (24.5%). The readiness to work was related to the job cadres of the HCWs (P = 0.001), while the provision of additional incentives and a change in the working conditions would influence the readiness of the HCWs to work. Conclusion: HCWs were ready to provide service in the course of the COVID‑19 pandemic if there was a safe work environment, although the availability of PPE and other personal factors would influence their willingness to work, while improvement in working conditions would motivate HCWs to work. Keywords: COVID‑19, health‑care workers, pandemic, personal protective equipmen

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

The Yoruba version of LittlEARS Auditory Questionnaire: Evaluation of auditory development in children with normal hearing

The goal of this study was to translate the LittlEARS Auditory Questionnaire into Yoruba language for use with Yoruba-speaking parents and to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Yoruba version of questionnaire. Translation of the LittlEARS Auditory Questionnaire into Yoruba language was done using a back-translation method. The study participants included 423 parents of normal hearing children aged 6–24 months. Psychometric analyses (scale analysis and item analysis) of the translated questionnaire was done. The scale characteristics in the dataset are: Internal consistency: Cronbach's alpha = 0.907; reliability; Split-half = 0.701; predictive accuracy; Guttman's lambda = 0.583; correlation between total score and children's age = 0.783. The regression analysis showed that 75.3% of the variance in the total scores can be explained by age. The Yoruba version of the LittlEARS Auditory Questionnaire is a dependable and valid tool as evidenced by the results of psychometric analyses. The tool is useful for assessing auditory development in children between 6 and 24 months of age. Keywords: Auditory development, Hearing loss, LittlEARS auditory questionnaire, Psychometric propertie

Auditory lifestyles, attitudes to noise and beliefs about hearing loss and hearing protection among undergraduates in southern Nigeria

Noise tolerance is a possible reflection of the attitudes of young people, and probably influenced by beliefs on hearing loss and the use of hearing protection devices. This study addressed the attitudes and beliefs of young Nigerians towards noise thereby providing background data that is necessary for design of culturally relevant interventions to reduce noise exposure and hearing loss. This study determined the attitude towards noise and beliefs about hearing loss and hearing protection among young people in Nigeria.It was a cross-sectional study using semi-structured questionnaires. The subjects were 427 university undergraduate students. Data was collected on their attitudes to noise and beliefs about hearing protection and hearing loss. Youths Attitude to Noise (YANS) and Beliefs about Hearing Protection and Hearing Loss (BAHPL) instruments were completed by the subjects.Majority of the subjects had neutral attitude towards noise and neutral attitude in Beliefs About Hearing Protection and Hearing Loss while only a minority used any form of hearing protection devices. Indifference is the main attitude of young Nigerians towards noise and hearing loss. Future interventions should focus on the harmful effects of noise, emphasizing the need to avoid exposure to loud noise while encouraging use of hearing protection devices during noise exposure.Keywords: Attitude, Culture, Young people, Noise, Hearing los

Quality of life of deaf and hard of hearing students in Ibadan metropolis, Nigeria

<div><p>Quality of Life encompasses an individual’s well-being and health, social participation and satisfaction with functional daily living. Disabilities such as deafness can impact on the quality of life with spatial variance to the environment. Deafness causes communicative problems with significant consequences in cognitive, social, and emotional well-being of affected individuals. However, information relating to the quality of life of deaf and hard of hearing individuals, especially students in developing countries like Nigeria, which could be used to design special health-related interventions is sparse. This study examined the quality of life of deaf and hard of hearing students in Ibadan metropolis, Nigeria. One hundred and ten deaf and hard of hearing students participated in this cross-sectional study. Participants were drawn from all four secondary schools for the Deaf in Ibadan metropolis. The 26 item Brief version of the WHO Quality of Life questionnaire was used for data collection. The data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics at statistical significance of p<0.05. Majority (57.8%) of the deaf and hard of hearing students had poor quality of life. Attending the special school for the Deaf, upper socio-economic status and age (≥17years) are significantly associated with better quality of life. However, gender and age at onset of hearing loss had no significant influence on the quality of life. The Deaf community available in the special school appeared to protect against stigma and discrimination, while also promoting social interactions between deaf and hard of hearing individuals.</p></div

Quality of life status according to the independent variables examined.

<p>Quality of life status according to the independent variables examined.</p

Socio-demographic characteristics.

<p>Socio-demographic characteristics.</p

Adjusted odds ratio estimate for good QoL.

<p>Adjusted odds ratio estimate for good QoL.</p