Changing etiological spectrum of acute liver failure.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Acute liver failure (ALF) is an uncommon but potentially dramatic syndrome characterized by massive hepatic necrosis and has a very high mortality rate of 50% to 75% without liver transplantation. This study is aimed at analyzing the etiological spectrum of ALF patients and compare these with ALF mimics such as malaria, dengue fever and other tropical infectious diseases. METHODS: The study population included patients who presented with ALF and ALF mimics in a tertiary care center over two years. We retrospectively analyzed the patient case files and a comparison was made concerning the baseline demographic details, clinical profile, laboratory values and outcomes. RESULTS: Sixty-three patients were assessed, with 32 in ALF and 31 in ALF mimics group. The most common cause for ALF was hepatitis A virus (25%), followed by hepatitis B virus (18.7%), drug-induced liver injury (12.7%), autoimmune hepatitis (12.5%), hepatitis E virus (9.3%) and Wilson's disease (6.25%). In the ALF mimics group, malaria (58.06%) was the most common cause, followed by dengue fever (16.1%), leptospirosis (12.9%) and scrub typhus (12.9%). Patients in the ALF mimics group had significantly higher incidence of fever (p = 0.001), hepatosplenomegaly (p = 0.01), anemia (p = 0.02) and shorter jaundice to encephalopathy duration (p = 0.032) as compared to the ALF group, while higher transaminase levels (p = 0.03), bilirubin (p = 0.01), prothrombin time (p = 0.01), serum ammonia (p = 0.02) and mortality (p = 0.02) were observed in ALF patients. CONCLUSIONS: The most common cause for ALF was hepatitis A virus, followed by hepatitis B virus, while in ALF mimics it was malaria followed by dengue fever, in our study. Patients of ALF mimics can have similar presentation, but a high index of suspicion and awareness is required to identify the common infectious ALF mimics for early diagnosis.

Aetiology and clinical spectrum of gastric outlet obstruction in North West India.

Our study to evaluate the aetiological and clinical spectrum of gastric outlet obstruction (GOO) in North-west India showed malignant cause (54.9%) was more common than benign (45.1%). Common causes of malignancy were gall bladder (37.5%), gastric (31.8%) and pancreatic carcinoma (19.6%); commonest benign causes were opioid abuse (29%), peptic ulcer disease (21.6%), ingestion of corrosives (20.2%) and chronic pancreatitis (12.3%).

Variational mode decomposition and binary grey wolf optimization-based automated epilepsy seizure classification framework.

This work proposes a variational mode decomposition (VMD) and binary grey wolf optimization (BGWO) based seizure classification framework. VMD decomposes the EEG signal into band-limited intrinsic mode function (BL-IMFs) non-recursively. The frequency domain, time domain, and information theory-based features are extracted from the BL-IMFs. Further, an optimal feature subset is selected using BGWO. Finally, the selected features were utilized for classification using six different supervised machine learning algorithms. The proposed framework has been validated experimentally by 58 test cases from the CHB-MIT scalp EEG and the Bonn University database. The proposed framework performance is quantified by average sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy. The selected features, along with Bayesian regularized shallow neural networks (BR-SNNs), resulted in maximum accuracy of 99.53 and 99.64 for 1 and 2 s epochs, respectively, for database 1. The proposed framework has achieved 99.79 and 99.84 accuracy for 1 and 2 s epochs, respectively, for database 2.

Gastric outlet obstruction in children: an overview with report of Jodhpur disease and Sharma's classification.

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: Gastric outlet obstruction (GOO) is overwhelmingly described as infantile hypertrophic pyloric stenosis that overshadows other causes; thereby, there is a need to develop an elaborate and comprehensive classification. We present the same and establish a new disease called primary acquired gastric outlet obstruction during infancy and childhood that was reported for the first time by us in 1997, reviewing the literature published since then, with report of our new cases. METHODS: Eight patients of this disease presented at our center from 1996 to May 2008, and these were analyzed epidemiologically and clinically. Other reports published in literature were compared, and all reported patients were compiled. RESULTS: All 8 cases presented at age ranging from 1 month to 6 years, with mean age of 2.9 years; there was predilection for male sex (male, 7; female, 1). Presenting symptoms and signs were nonbilious vomiting, weight loss, dehydration, dyselectrolytemia, abdominal pain, and visible gastric peristalsis. Upper gastrointestinal contrast study showed large stomach and increased gastric emptying time. Endoscopy displayed normal stomach without intraluminal lesion. Exploration revealed a dilated stomach, without any pyloric muscular hypertrophy, scarring, inflammation, or obstruction externally or intraluminally. Result of histopathologic examination was normal. All patients except 1 (died of unrelated cause) were cured by Heineke-Mikulicz pyloroplasty. CONCLUSIONS: These patients represent a new disease entity designated as primary acquired gastric outlet obstruction during infancy and childhood. Author's classification is complete and scientific, encompassing all rare causes of GOO. We nickname this idiopathic variety of GOO the Jodhpur disease, the place of the first cases.