Process of Fingerprint Authentication using Cancelable Biohashed Template

Template protection using cancelable biometrics prevents data loss and hacking stored templates, by providing considerable privacy and security. Hashing and salting techniques are used to build resilient systems. Salted password method is employed to protect passwords against different types of attacks namely brute-force attack, dictionary attack, rainbow table attacks. Salting claims that random data can be added to input of hash function to ensure unique output. Hashing salts are speed bumps in an attacker’s road to breach user’s data. Research proposes a contemporary two factor authenticator called Biohashing. Biohashing procedure is implemented by recapitulated inner product over a pseudo random number generator key, as well as fingerprint features that are a network of minutiae. Cancelable template authentication used in fingerprint-based sales counter accelerates payment process. Fingerhash is code produced after applying biohashing on fingerprint. Fingerhash is a binary string procured by choosing individual bit of sign depending on a preset threshold. Experiment is carried using benchmark FVC 2002 DB1 dataset. Authentication accuracy is found to be nearly 97\%. Results compared with state-of art approaches finds promising

Knowledge, attitude and practice towards pharmacovigilance among postgraduate medical students at a tertiary care hospital: a cross sectional questionnaire based study

Background: Adverse drug reaction (ADR) is major global health problem affecting both children and adults. ADRs are among the leading cause of mortality and morbidity leading to prolonged hospitalization. Hence, spontaneous reporting of ADRs by healthcare professionals forms the backbone of pharmacovigilance. Therefore, there is an urgent need for sensitization about drug safety monitoring among healthcare professionals (HCPs).Methods: A cross sectional questionnaire based study was conducted among 200 postgraduate medical students between April 2016 and May 2016 using a pre-validated questionnaire. Descriptive statistics was used for analysis.Results: Among 200 questionnaires distributed, only 150 provided responses reflecting a response rate of 75%. The postgraduates who understood the definition of adverse drug reaction and pharmacovigilance were 90% and 64% respectively. The most encouraging finding was 97% of postgraduates thought that reporting an ADR was necessary which in turn increases the patient safety. 60% postgraduates were unaware that the nurses and pharmacists also had the responsibility of reporting ADR. The postgraduates who encountered ADRs during clinical practice were 79% whereas reporting was only 2%.Conclusions: This study suggests that even though majority of postgraduates have better knowledge and attitude towards pharmacovigilance and ADR, the practice of reporting ADRs is inadequate. Therefore, there is an urgent need for educational intervention in the form of training programmes and continued medical education (CME) periodically to encourage ADR reporting among the postgraduates

Pattern of antimicrobials use in chronic leg ulcers at a tertiary care hospital

Background: Chronic leg ulcers are common among elderly population with major risk factors being diabetes, smoking etc., and their sequelae are the most common cause of disability and hospital admission with a significant impact on the quality of life. This study was taken up to evaluate usage of Antimicrobial agents (AMA) in chronic leg ulcers using WHO prescribing indicators.Methods: A prospective, observational study, in which 101 prescriptions with antibiotics, prescribed for cases of chronic leg ulcer, were collected from the Department of Surgery, analysed and assessed using WHO prescribing indicators.Results: One hundred and one prescriptions collected over a period of 6 weeks, were analysed using WHO prescribing indicators. Total number of drugs prescribed was 721. Average number of drugs per prescription was 7. 36% of the drugs were prescribed by their generic name and only 35% of the total drugs were from EML (2011). Prescriptions of AMA accounted for 34.4%; most common being Beta lactam (25.6%) followed by Linezolid (20.8%), Metronidazole (17.7%), Fluoroquinolones (7.6%) and combination antibiotics (28%). All patients received one or more injections. The average duration of AMA therapy was 5 days.Conclusions: Majority of the AMAs used in the treatment of chronic leg ulcers were injection. However prescriptions from Essential Medicine List and by generic name were less frequent

Tramadol and its combination with piroxicam in post-cesarean pain management: a comparative study

Background: Cesarean delivery is a major surgical procedure, requiring high quality pain relief to facilitate early ambulation, infant care and prevention of post-operative morbidity. There is no gold standard for post-cesarean pain management.Methods: Cases were randomly assigned to 2 groups of 30 cases each. One group received Tramadol 100mg and another, Tramadol 100mg+ Piroxicam 20mg. Injections were given intramuscularly, postoperatively after skin closure. Diclofenac 75mg was the rescue analgesia. Primary outcome measure was control of pain, assessed by visual analogue scale (VAS). Secondary outcomes were sedation and time to rescue analgesia. Safety of the drugs was assessed by adverse drug reactions. Data was analysed by student’s t test, analysis of variance and post-hoc test.Results: Multimodal group showed better analgesia compared to unimodal group (p<0001). Drowsiness was the main adverse effect in both treatment groups.Conclusions: Multimodal analgesic combination of tramadol and piroxicam showed superior analgesic effect with better pain control and longer duration of action compared to tramadol alone

Pentazocine versus pentazocine with piroxicam for postoperative pain relief after cesarean section: an open label, comparative study

Background: The concept of multimodal analgesia was introduced more than a decade ago as a technique to improve analgesia and reduce the incidence of opioid-related adverse events. The rationale for this strategy is the achievement of sufficient analgesia due to the additive or synergistic effects between different classes of analgesics. Objectives of the study was to compare the efficacy and safety of pentazocine and its combination with piroxicam in the management of post cesarean pain.Methods: Cases were randomly assigned to 2 groups of 30 cases each. One group received pentazocine 30mg and another; pentazocine 30mg + piroxicam 20mg. Injections were given intramuscularly, postoperatively after skin closure. Diclofenac 75mg was the rescue analgesia. Primary outcome measure was control of pain, assessed by visual analogue scale (VAS). Secondary outcomes were sedation and time to rescue analgesia. Safety of the drugs was assessed by adverse drug reactions. Data was analysed by student’s t test, analysis of variance and post-hoc test.Results: Multimodal group showed better analgesia compared to unimodal group (p<0001). Drowsiness was the main adverse effect in both treatment groups.Conclusions: Multimodal analgesic combination of pentazocine and piroxicam showed superior analgesic effect with better pain control and longer duration of action compared to pentazocine alone

A prospective study to assess the efficacy and safety of iron sucrose in pregnant women with iron deficiency anemia in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Prevalence of iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is 58% among pregnant women in India. Oral iron therapy is recommended as first-line therapy in mild anemia. Moderate anemia in pregnancy results in high maternal morbidity and mortality. In India, women become pregnant with low iron stores, where oral iron therapy cannot meet the requirement and need parenteral iron therapy. This study was undertaken to evaluate the efficacy and safety of iron sucrose complex (ISC) in pregnant women with IDA.Methods: A prospective study was conducted between June 2014 and June 2015 in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Bangalore medical college and research institute. 60 pregnant women having hemoglobin (Hb) between 7 and 9 g/dl with diagnosed IDA were given intravenous ISC in a dose of 200 mg on alternate days after calculating the dose requirement. The efficacy of the therapy was assessed by hematological parameters measured at 4 weeks and 8 weeks of treatment. To assess the safety, adverse drug effects were recorded.Results: The mean Hb increased from 8.02±0.56 to 11.38±0.5 g% (p<0.0001) after eight weeks of therapy. There was a significant rise in serum ferritin levels (from 15.12±1.8 to 31.4±4.9 µg/l) (p<0.0001) at the end of the study. Other parameters including mean corpuscular volume, mean corpuscular Hb, mean corpuscular Hb concentration, and serum reticulocyte count were also improved significantly. There were no allergic reactions.Conclusion: Parenteral iron therapy was effective in increasing Hb, serum ferritin, and other hematological parameters in pregnant women with moderate anemia. Intravenous iron sucrose complex can be used in tertiary care hospitals where it can replace conventional parenteral iron therapy due to injection-related side effects

Single dose metronidazole, tinidazole and ornidazole in the treatment of bacterial vaginosis - a comparative study

Background: Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is the most common cause of abnormal vaginal discharge. There is a lack of consensus on the etiologic agents or agents associated with BV, due to polymicrobial nature. There is high recurrence rate of BV and it is difficult to treat. Metronidazole is the drug of choice but newer nitroimidazoles are better alternatives with long half-lives and better tolerability.Methods: This was a prospective, comparative, randomized, single blinded study on 120 diagnosed cases of bacterial vaginosis, with symptomatic or asymptomatic abnormal vaginal discharge. Amsel’s criteria were used to diagnose bacterial vaginosis as well as to assess the response and classify the patients as cured, partially cured and not cured. Statistical analysis was done by Chi square test. The cure rate was compared considering metronidazole cure rate as gold standard.Results: At 1 week, the cure rate of tinidazole and ornidazole was 89.5% in both the groups, and at 4 weeks, it was 84.5% for both drugs (P <0.001). Metronidazole showed a cure rate of 65.7% at 4 weeks.Conclusions: Tinidazole and ornidazole have better cure rate as compared to metronidazole in cases of bacterial vaginosis

Stochastic Model and Computational Measures of Batch Process Queuing System with Hetero Multiservers

Multiprocessor system models at present are very important and widely used in modelling transaction processing systems, communication networks, mobile networks, and flexible machine shops with groups of machines. Heterogeneous processors system with one main server and several identical servers are studied. In this paper, reconfiguration and rebooting delays are considered to study the performance measures for both bounded and unbounded system. Numerical results are presented for various performability parameters