Evidence-Based Guideline for Adult Sedation, Pain Assessment, and Analgesia in a Low Resource Setting Intensive Care Unit: Review Article.

BACKGROUND: Agitation and anxiety occur frequently in ICU and affect about 30-80% of patients in ICU present with delirium worldwide, and it is associated with adverse clinical outcomes. This review aimed to systematically review articles and finally draw an evidence-based guideline for an area with limited resources. METHODS: The review was reported based on preferred reporting items for systemic and meta-analysis (PRISMA) protocol. We searched literature from PubMed, Google Scholar, and Medline database using keywords like the level of sedation, sedation score, pain assessment in ICU, and sedative drugs in ICU from an article published in English. After extraction with a patient population and exclusion, five randomized clinical trials, four systemic reviews and meta-analysis, four observation cohort study, and two practical guidelines were used for the review. CONCLUSION: In addition to high validity and reliability, RASS has the advantage of easiness to remember for nurses making it a preferred sedation assessment tool in an adult ICU setting. Light sedation with daily interruption was recommended with an aim of an awake and alert patient ready for the weaning trial. Propofol was preferred when sedation is for a short duration and when intermittent awakening is required. Ketamine is the preferred induction for asthmatic hypotensive and patient requiring prolonged continuous sedation. With a similar time for sedation, diazepam shows a shorter time for intubation compared to midazolam. Besides diazepam has shown a cheaper cost of sedation than midazolam. This makes it a drug of preference in a low resource setting.

High rate of intestinal parasites among a closed community of Zay populations residing on three islands of Lake Ziway, Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND: Several factors including socio-economic and access to health facility influence burden of intestinal parasites. Epidemiological data from hard to reach areas will help to identify high-risk communities for targeted intervention. We, therefore, assessed the magnitude of intestinal parasites among Zay people residing in three islands of Lake Ziway in Ethiopia. METHODS: This cross-sectional survey was conducted in March 2013 on 444 individuals aged 6 months to 85 years. Stool samples were analyzed using wet mount and formol-ether concentration methods. Data were collected using interviewer-administered questionnaire and analyzed using STATA version 10. RESULTS: Among the study participants, 52% (321/444) were children under 15 years. While 72.8% were positive for at least one intestinal parasite, single, dual and triple infections were found in 42.1%, 23.9% and 6.3%, respectively. Four types of intestinal parasites were detected in two children. The commonest parasites were Entamoeba histolytica/dispar (51.4%), Schistosoma mansoni (17.8%), Giardia lamblia (14.4%), Trichuris trichiura (10.8%), Taenia species (5.6%), Hymenolopis nana (4.5%), Ascaris lumbricoides (4.1%), Entrobius vermicularis (0.9%), Hookworm (0.7%), and Strongyloides stercoralis (0.2%). Remarkable proportion of study participants (51.3%) had no latrine and >85% of the islanders use the lake water for drinking, cleaning or both. About 36% had no information about waterborne and related diseases, while 31% never heard about bilharziasis. Fishing and farming were the main source of income. In the multivariate model, being in the age group > 15 years (AOR = 0.49; 95%CI = 0.28-0.85) and not using lake water for drinking or washing (AOR = 0.52; 95%CI = 0.28-0.99) had protective effect, after adjusting for education, occupation and hand wash after latrine use. CONCLUSION: The observed high rate of intestinal parasites (72.8%) in these hard to reach Islanders of Lake Ziway, warrants targeted and sustainable intervention.

Evaluation and characterization of tumor lysis syndrome before and after chemotherapy among pediatric oncology patients in Tikur Anbessa specialized hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND: Tumor lysis syndrome (TLS) is a life-threatening emergency disorder, caused by an abrupt release of intracellular metabolites after tumor cell death. It is characterized by a series of metabolic manifestations, especially hyperuricemia, hyperkalemia, hyperphosphatemia and hypocalcemia. The aim of this study was to evaluate and characterize the incidence of tumor lysis syndrome among pediatric oncology patients before and after treatment. METHODS: Hospital based prospective cohort study was conducted for 6 months on 61 newly diagnosed pediatric oncology patients. Socio-demographic data was collected by interview administered questionnaire. Patients were followed and the physical diagnosis, imaging and laboratory results were interpreted by senior physicians. Data was entered to and analyzed by SPSS version 23. RESULTS: Among 61 pediatric oncology patients 39(63.9%) were males. The mean (±SD) age of the pediatric patients was 6.39 (± 3.67) years ranging from 2 months to 14 years. 29.5% of patients were found to have TLS. There were 11.5% and 18.0% of laboratory TLS (LTLS) and clinical TLS (CTLS) cases respectively. There were72.2% spontaneous and 27.8% treatment induced TLS cases with 23% and 21.3% cases of hyperuricemia and 4.9% and 6.6% cases of hyperkalemia incidence before and after treatment respectively. Only two patients died, in the study period, due to TLS. CONCLUSION: There was high incidence of TLS irrespective of socio-demographic variation among study participants, suggesting that children with cancer are at risk of developing TLS. As TLS is a life-threatening complication of malignancies, early identification of patients at risk and reducing morbidity and mortality is crucially important.