Chronic pain, its management and psychological issues: A review

Chronic pain is one of the most prevalent, disabling conditions both in clinical and psychological aspects and yet often remains inadequately treateddue to cost reasons. Moreover, chronic pain commonly occurs in conjunction with depression, anxiety and somatoform disorders. Chronic andrecurrent pain not associated with a disease is very common in childhood and adolescence, but there are very less studies and analysis has been doneon chronic pain epidemiology and management. As pain is the important factor influencing quality of life and also the reason for which a person seekthe advice of physician even require hospitalization that is why this systematic review highlights the different types of chronic pain, epidemiology,pathophysiology, and management of chronic pain along with psychological issues associated with it.Keywords: Pain, Psychological aspects, Epidemiology, Somatoform disor

Machine Learning-Based Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in A Generalized α-κ-μ Fading Channel

An improvement in spectrum usage is possible with the help of a cognitive radio network, which allows secondary users’ access to the unused licensed frequency band of a primary user. Thus, spectrum sensing is a fundamental concept in cognitive radio networks. In recent years, Cooperative spectrum sensing using machine learning has garnered a great deal of attention as a technique of enhancing sensing capability. In this study, K-means clustering is taken into consideration for the purpose of analyzing the effectiveness of cooperative spectrum sensing in a generalized α-κ-μ fading channel. The proposed approach is examined using receiver operating characteristic curves to determine its performance. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is contrasted with that of the existing detection techniques such as Cooperating spectrum sensing based on energy detection and OR-fusion-based cooperative spectrum sensing for fading channels κ-μ, α-κ-μ. As demonstrated by results, the proposed method outshines an existing method in terms of comparison parameters, as determined by simulation results in the MATLAB version

Knowledge, attitude and practice of pharmacovigilance towards adverse drug reactions reporting among health care professionals (nurses) in a tertiary care teaching hospital in Eastern India: an observational study

Background: Nursing staffs spend most time in patient care and are bedside caregivers. To expect voluntary reporting of adverse reactions, it is essential that they possess proper knowledge, right attitude and practice reporting. Therefore, the present study was aimed to assess the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Pharmacovigilance towards ADRs reporting.Methods: A prospective, cross sectional, observational, questionnaire-based survey was conducted among nurses in a tertiary care teaching hospital in Eastern India. Questionnaire containing 15 questions was used to assess knowledge, attitude and practice. The questionnaire was administered to 150 nurses. Analysis of data was done using statistical software..Results: The response rate in our study was 86.67%. Nurses have good knowledge of pharmacovigilance and adverse reaction. However, only 10% have reported an adverse reaction in our study. This shows that in spite of having a good knowledge of reporting, nurses have poor attitude, which is reflected by a low reporting rate. Nurses opined that taking patient care is of prime importance than report an adverse reaction. This corroborates the low reporting rate in our set up.Conclusions: Majority of nurses have good knowledge on pharmacovigilance and adverse drug reaction. The concern remains on the low reporting rate. Continuous training programmes, and reminders likely to enhance the voluntary reporting from the nursing staffs

Adverse drug reaction reporting in a tertiary care teaching hospital in eastern India: a retrospective study

Background: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are one of the prime causes of morbidity and mortality, increase in hospital stay and socioeconomic burden on the patients. Periodic monitoring aids in formulating methods for safe usage of medicines in hospitals. This study was undertaken to study the patterns, assessment of causality, severity, preventability, body systems affected from ADRs received by the Pharmacovigilance cell, Department of Pharmacology between April 2018 to June 2019.Methods: The present study is an observational, retrospective, non-interventional analysis of voluntarily reported ADRs. Demography of patients, causative drugs, reactions, outcome, and severity are recorded. Data were analysed and expressed in numbers, percentages.Results: A total of 180 ADRs were spontaneously reported. Dermatology (42.8%), psychiatry (23.9%) and general medicine (18.3%) are the major departments reporting ADRs in our hospital. 60.6% reports were in males. The body system with maximum reactions is dermatological (51.1%). Drug class most commonly affected is anti-microbials (36.1%). Paracetamol (8.9%) is the most common drug with reactions. Causality assessment stated that 41.7% ADRs are probable and 58.3% were possible. Severity assessment showed 86.7% as mild and 13.3% as moderate. Preventability assessment stated that 93.3% ADRs not preventable, 5.6% probably preventable and 1.1% definitely preventable.Conclusions: The study provides a valuable insight with regards to the pattern of ADRs in our hospital. This will be useful in initiating a reporting culture, increase awareness, reducing under-reporting of ADR in our set up

Inverted Meckel’s diverticulum: a rare cause of intussusception in children

Invagination of proximal segment of intestine to distal one results in intussusceptions and is a common cause of intestinal obstruction in children. In most of the cases of intussusceptions, the cause is idiopathic in nature; the other causes may be infection, polyp or anatomical abnormalities. Occasionally, Meckel’s diverticulum may cause intussusception and inverted Meckel’s diverticulum leading to intussusceptions is very rare in children. It is difficult to diagnose inversion of Meckel’s diverticulum preoperatively. Here in we report a case of 6 yrs old male child, who was operated for intussusception and found to have inverted Meckel’s diverticulum as lead point.     

A Circular Adaptive Median Filter for Salt and Pepper Noise Suppression from MRI Images

An adaptive median filter with a circular kernel, named as circular adaptive median filter (CAMF) is proposed in this article, for denoising of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images corrupted by salt and pepper noise of varying noise densities. An adaptive operation is incorporated in the proposed filter by varying the size of the circular kernel according to the requirement. The effectiveness of the CAMF is compared with six other competitive networks, i.e., conic adaptive median filter (CoAMF), decision based filter (DBF), modified switching median filter (MSWM), recursive adaptive modified filter (RAMF), plus adaptive median filter (PAMF), and cross adaptive median filter (CrAMF). The performance of all the models is analyzed using peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and computational time. Moreover, a non-parametric statistical test is conducted to illustrate the pair wise comparison of other filter with the proposed one. It is observed that the proposed approach has demonstrated superior performance with respect to the two performance measures

A Circular Adaptive Median Filter for Salt and Pepper Noise Suppression from MRI Images

941-944An adaptive median filter with a circular kernel, named as circular adaptive median filter (CAMF) is proposed in this article, for denoising of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images corrupted by salt and pepper noise of varying noise densities. An adaptive operation is incorporated in the proposed filter by varying the size of the circular kernel according to the requirement. The effectiveness of the CAMF is compared with six other competitive networks, i.e., conic adaptive median filter (CoAMF), decision based filter (DBF), modified switching median filter (MSWM), recursive adaptive modified filter (RAMF), plus adaptive median filter (PAMF), and cross adaptive median filter (CrAMF). The performance of all the models is analyzed using peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and computational time. Moreover, a non-parametric statistical test is conducted to illustrate the pair wise comparison of other filter with the proposed one. It is observed that the proposed approach has demonstrated superior performance with respect to the two performance measures

Prevalence of stunting among under-five children in refugee and internally displaced communities: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BackgroundA pooled estimate of stunting prevalence in refugee and internally displaced under-five children can help quantify the problem and focus on the nutritional needs of these marginalized groups. We aimed to assess the pooled prevalence of stunting in refugees and internally displaced under-five children from different parts of the globe.MethodsIn this systematic review and meta-analysis, seven databases (Cochrane, EBSCOHost, EMBASE, ProQuest, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science) along with “preprint servers” were searched systematically from the earliest available date to 14 February 2023. Refugee and internally displaced (IDP) under-five children were included, and study quality was assessed using “National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)” tools.ResultsA total of 776 abstracts (PubMed = 208, Scopus = 192, Cochrane = 1, Web of Science = 27, Embase = 8, EBSCOHost = 123, ProQuest = 5, Google Scholar = 209, and Preprints = 3) were retrieved, duplicates removed, and screened, among which 30 studies were found eligible for qualitative and quantitative synthesis. The pooled prevalence of stunting was 26% [95% confidence interval (CI): 21–31]. Heterogeneity was high (I2 = 99%, p < 0.01). A subgroup analysis of the type of study subjects revealed a pooled stunting prevalence of 37% (95% CI: 23–53) in internally displaced populations and 22% (95% CI: 18–28) among refugee children. Based on geographical distribution, the stunting was 32% (95% CI: 24–40) in the African region, 34% (95% CI: 24–46) in the South-East Asian region, and 14% (95% CI: 11–19) in Eastern Mediterranean region.ConclusionThe stunting rate is more in the internally displaced population than the refugee population and more in the South-East Asian and African regions. Our recommendation is to conduct further research to evaluate the determinants of undernutrition among under-five children of refugees and internally displaced populations from different regions so that international organizations and responsible stakeholders of that region can take effective remedial actions.Systematic review registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=387156, PROSPERO [CRD42023387156]