A Case Report of A Hybrid External Fixator for Fracture Repair in a 3-Month-Old Boer Goat (Capra hircus)

A 3-month-old male intact crossbred Boer Anglo Nubian caprine kid weighing 20.50Kg. presented to the School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) with a history of acute onset lameness of the left hind limb. Initial examination at a private veterinary clinic revealed a fracture of the left tibia. The patient was referred to the SVM for treatment. Physical and radiographic examination of the animal revealed a closed, complete, short oblique fracture of the distal metaphysis of the left tibia with moderate cranio-proximal displacemnt of the distal segment, The limb was temporarily immobilized using a pre-made bivalve cast until the surgery. Surgical intervention involved using hybrid external fixator best described as a maximal bilateral uniplanar (Type II) fixator frame with a distal fabricated aluminum ring. The post-operative regimen included antibiotics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, frequent cleaning of the pin-skin interface and apparatus bandage changes, The animal was also confined to pen rest initially with gradual increase in exercise. Since surgery, the patient has progressively increases weight bearing on the affected limb and was fully weight bearing upon external fixator removal, 6-weeks post operatively. This method of external fixatiojm has not been commonly used foe repair of fractured limbs in goats, however in this scenario it proved ecomonical and highly effectively in provideing the stability required for fracture repair. Veterarians with limited resourcs and financially conservative clients should consider this method for repairing similar type fractures in small ruminant animal species.

Copying Is Not Cheating: The Use of Copy Dentures In The Digital Denture Process

Dental practitioners often encounter patients who want to replace an old pair of complete dentures. There are many factors and inherent challenges involved in providing a new pair of dentures which are not only technically and clinically acceptable, but also acceptable to the patient. These challenges can prove to be particularly difficult, when the replacement denture is for an elderly patient, or patients with systemic disorders such as Parkinson's, Dementia, Alzheimer's or the physically frail. Previous denture use enables a patient to adapt more quickly to a new set of dentures, as compared with a patient who has never worn dentures before. However, when patients are wearing old and inadequate prosthesis over long periods, the necessary muscular control develops, which enables them to still function. Therefore, the difficulty arises if major changes are made in the new denture, and a lot of muscular adaptation is required for control. In these cases, the advantage of a copy dentures would be the ease with which neuromuscular adaption to the new dentures can occur. (Vohra and Habib 2013) The method described in this poster used materials readily available in a private practice to generate a pair of duplicate dentures which captured all of the features of the patients existing pair. These were modified chair-side and used to capture vital information on fit, occlusion and aesthetics, forming a template which was transferred to the laboratory and used to generate new dentures via the traditional laboratory process. The same template was also used to generate a pair of "AVADENT Digital Dentures" for comparison.

Avoiding burn out [abstract]

Burn-out is a term applied to the boredom with day-to-day practice and a desire to do something else. These symptoms are fairly common and are experienced after a number of years in practice doing tasks that have lost their challenge. It is more common in industry but less so in highly skilled workers. I have avoided these more by fortuitousness than design and the strategies I am outlining are what I believe happened in my case rather than a result of scientific study. These strategies therefore are subjective rather than objective, speculative rather than definitive and possibly may be of anecdotal value only. The strategies are as follows: -Keep current with new treatment modalities; -Constantly think of new methods of improving your current techniques; -Argue with yourself the pros and the cons of your methodology; -Take on new problems as soon as you have established reliable competence in your regular fields eg refractive surgery is a new area and prime one for this sort of exploration; -Participate in CME activities as a presenter regularly. (AU)

A multinational case-control study of cardiovascular disease and steroid hormone contraceptives: description and validation of methods

A hospital-based, case-control study of the association between current usage of oral contraceptives and first-time cases of acute myocardial infarction, stroke, or a venous thromboembolic event (deep vein thrombiosis or pulmonary embolus) was carried out in 17 countries from four regions (Africa, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, [including Jamaica]). A total of 3792 cases and 10,281 hospitalised controls matched for age were recruited during a 4-year period, ending June 1993. The study was designed to have sufficient power to detect a relative risk of 2 for developing each of the three study diseases, associated with current oral contraceptive use in each of the four regions, with the exception of acute myocardial infarction (for which all non European regions were combined) and for venous thromboembolic events in Asia, where these disorders are rare. This report describes the background, pilot study, methods, and the analyses carried out to validate the methods used in the study. (Au)

Quantitative assessment of geophagous behaviour as a potential source of exposure to geohelminth infection

The common form of pica, geophagy, has direct adverse nutritional effects and also exposes children to soil-borne infection. Existing methods for assessing geophagy are either inappropriate for field use (radiology) or unreliable (reporting). A new method is described, based on the measurement of soil-derived silica in stools. More than 90 percent of silica is excreted within one gut transit period of ingestion. The amount excreted is proportional to the amount ingested. Faecal level of dietary silica (<2 percent dry wt stool) can be distinguished from levels due to geophagy (up to 25 percent dry wt stool). Studies in 2 children's homes in Jamaica showed that 33 percent and 66 percent of children were geophagous, ingesting up to 10g soil day-1. The geophagy of <20 percent of the children accounted for >60 percent of the total soil ingested. This overdispersion of exposure to soil-borne infection may contribute to the observed aggregation of geohelminth infection.(AU)

A catch up growth chart

Severely malnourished children should stay in hospital for as short a time as possible to minimize the harmful effects of separation from their families and institutionalization and to ensure that scarce hospital beds are used efficiently. Repletion of wasting, that is, attainment of ideal or expected weight-for-height (EWH) has been recommended as the criterion for recovery from PEM. As it may be impractical to measure length, a simple visual means of monitoring the progress of children recovering from PEM is needed. A "catch up" growth chart was devised, based on the mean deficit in weight-for-height of 2-3 kg of 827 children admitted to the ward of the Tropical Metabolism Research Unit (TMRU) in 1958-1976. This deficit was restored in 10.3 (ñ3.95 SD) weeks by a subsample of 52 recent admissions, a rate of recovery similar to previous reports from the TMRU. In 1972/1973 a similar treatment regime using oil-fortified milk ("high energy feeding") was instituted in 4 rural hospitals in Jamaica. As the majority (72 percent) of the children who were measured attained 90 percent of EWH, the chart proposed will be practicable in any hospital. (Summary)

Penetrating wounds of the thorax

A review of penetrating wounds of the chest seen at the University Hospital of the West Indies during the period January, 1974 to December, 1976, is presented. Haemothorax can be successfully treated by tube thoracostomy and underwater seal drainage. Emergency thoracotomy was necessary for bleeding in excess of 1,000 cc after tube thoracostomy, continued bleeding following tube thorascomy with associated signs of shock, a large entry wound, cardiac tamponade and associated inta-abdominal injury. All patients with cardiac tamponade who reached the hospital alive survived following thoracotomy and cardiorrhaphy (AU)

Dengue in the Caribbean: virus isolation in a mosquito (Aedes pseudoscutellaris) cell line

During outbreaks of dengue fever in the Caribbean in 1977 and 1978 a continuous cell line derived from Aedes pseudoscutellaris was successfully used for the isolation of dengue virus strains from acute human sera, 238 strains were isolated and culture fluid was successfully used as antigen for the identification of several strains. The isolates all produced a marked syncytial cytopathic effect often visible as early as four days after inoculation. The method was successfully employed in the field where, because of their low optimal incubation temperature, the cells suffered no ill effects under ambient conditions. The isolation method was found to be much more sensitive than conventional mouse inoculation (AU)

Myomectomy in infertile Jamaican women

One hundred nineteen Jamaican women who underwent mycomectomy from 1964 to 1969 were followed up for 5 to 9 years. Infertility was the most common presenting complaint. Preoperative hysterosalpingograms were performed on 61 patients and were abnormal for the majority of these patients. Surgery revealed submucous fibroids in 41 patients and pelvic inflammatory disease in 51 patients. The pregnancy rate following myomectomy was 18.5 percent, but unsuccessful for all patients who underwent both myomectomy and tuboplasty. Twenty-three patients had a recurrence of myoma, and 13 of these underwent subsequent hysterectomny. (AU)

Quality control in laboratory investigations on Schistosoma mansoni on St. Lucia, West Indies: a staff assesment scheme

A method is described for the supervision of technicians engaged in microscopical screening of large numbers of stools for Schistosoma mansoni ova. The scheme presents graphically a regular updated longitudinal evaluation of both individual and group standards of technical competence (AU)

Total protein synthesis in elderly people: a comparison of results with [15N]glycine and [14C]leucine

Total body protein turnover was studied in six elderly patients. During the study they were fed by continuous infusion of a liquid formula through a nasogastric tube. L-[1-1+C] leucine and [15N]-glycine were infused at a constant rate for 30 h. The labelled glycine was infused into the intragastric line; the labelled leucine was given either by this route of intravenously. The specific radioactivity of free leucine in plasma and the rate of output of 14CO2 in expired air both reached a plateau at 10 h, and remained constant until the end of the infusion at 30 h. The 15N abundance in urinary urea and total N was very similar. In neither was a plateau reached by 30 h but in four out of the six patients the abundance in urinary NH4+ had attained a plateau by the end of the infusion. Flux rates and rates of protein synthesis were calculated in four ways: (A) from the specific radioactivity of plasma leucine at plateau; (B) from the proportion of dose excreted as 1+CO2 at plateau; (C) from the final rates of 15N excretion in urea or total urinary N; (D) from the final or plateau rates of 15N excretion in urinary NH4+. On average, the estimates of synthesis rate obtained by methods B and C agreed closely; those given by methods A and D were lower.(AU)

The determination of hypoglycin-A in blood and plasma

Hypoglycin-A, the causative agent of vomiting sickness, was added to samples of human blood plasma and whole haemolysed blood and the quantitative recovery of the compound by means of comparison of the amino acid profiles before and after bromination of the samples was investigated. The method was found to be suitable for the estimation of the compound in blood or plasma down to a level of about 1 æmole/100ml. Analyses of blood samples from cases of suspected ackee poisoning, using the method reported, proved negative. The implications of this are discussed (AU)