Quality of Life among Patients with Bipolar Disorder.

Bipolar Disorder is a major psychiatric disorder. It has a chronic course of remitting and relapsing episodes of mania and depression and tends to deteriorate mental and cognitive functions of patients. This disorder affects deeply the function and feelings of subjects and impacts negatively on quality of life. We found out the quality of life in patients with Bipolar Disorder with that of general population and order of impairment among domain of physical health, psychological health, social relationship and environment domain. This was a descriptive, cross-sectional, comparative and analytical study. The study was conducted in the department of Psychiatry, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU), Dhaka, Bangladesh from January 2015 to October 2016. Eighty (80) patients with Bipolar Disorder who fulfilled inclusion criteria were selected as sample from department of psychiatry in BSMMU and National Institute of Mental Health, Dhaka. Clinical diagnosis of patients was done by consultant psychiatrist with Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I CV). Then Bengali version of WHO Quality of Life Scale brief version (WHOQOL BREF 1998) was applied to evaluate quality of life in different domains including physical health, psychological health, social relationship and environment domain. Semi structural questionnaire were used for collecting sociodemographic information. In this process of study age and sex matched 80 healthy controls from hospital staff and patient's attendants without physical or psychiatric illness were recruited for comparison. Data were analyzed by Statistical Package for Social Science Version 16. The study revealed that mean score of overall quality of life of patients were 3.11 and healthy controls were 3.95, mean score of overall health of patients were 2.94 and healthy control were 3.88, mean score of physical health domain of patients were 3.14 and healthy control were 4.00, mean score of psychological domain of patients were 3.01 and healthy control were 3.87, mean score of social relationship domain of patients were 2.31 and healthy control were 3.72, mean score of environment domain of patients were 2.73 and healthy control were 3.35. Among patients quality of life showed impaired in low socio-economic condition. Result of this study may help to encourage further research.

Successful pregnancy in a woman after repair of bladder exstrophy.

Exstrophy of bladder is a rare congenital anomaly. Pregnancy following surgical correction of bladder exstrophy occurred in this woman. Improved techniques in urinary diversion operation have enabled a large number of patients with bladder exstrophy to achieve urinary control. They can live fairly normal lives and some have achieved pregnancy. Case reports of such exist in the literature. The present case is based on the experience of a 28 years old lady who had successful pregnancy and delivery following curative repair of this defect one and a half year ago. A living healthy male baby was delivered by elective cesarean section.

Bacterial colonisation of Doppler probes on vascular surgical wards.

AIM: hospital acquired infections cost the NHS 1 pound sterling billion each year and medical equipment may act both as source and vector of nosocomial infection. This study examined bacterial contamination of Doppler ultrasound probes (USP) in routine use on vascular surgical wards in six hospitals and the knowledge of staff about the potential for cross infection from contaminated probes. METHODS: probe head impressions and swab cultures of probe holders were plated on mannitol salt agar before and after cleaning with a paper towel. Putative S. aureus isolates were identified to species level and susceptibility to selected antimicrobials tested. Concurrently, junior medical staff were surveyed about probe cleaning protocols. RESULTS: methicillin susceptible S. aureus was isolated from 2/21 (10%) with near confluent bacterial growth from six others (28%). The latter may have obscured low numbers of S. aureus. Further since swabs were plated without prior enrichment culture, it is likely that contamination with S. aureus might have been underestimated. No positive cultures were obtained after wiping the USP with a paper towel. 22/23 (95%) junior doctors failed to clean the USP prior to use. CONCLUSION: USP contamination with pathogenic bacteria occurs under "in-use" conditions and junior medical staff are unaware of simple measures to prevent this. Strict guidelines for USP cleaning between patient use should, therefore, be adopted particularly when monitoring postoperative graft patency.

Recurrent bile duct stones after transduodenal sphincteroplasty.

BACKGROUND: Transduodenal sphincteroplasty (TDS) offers permanent prophylaxis against further stones in the common bile duct (CBD) by allowing continuous free efflux of bile from the papilla. PATIENTS AND RESULTS: In a personal series of 267 consecutive operations, four patients underwent further treatment for recurrent CBD stones during a median follow-up of 12 years. Three of them received Roux-en-Y biliary diversion and had no further symptoms; the fourth patient remains well four years after endoscopic extraction of stones. DISCUSSION: Recurrent stone formation is rare after an adequate TDS and probably reflects retained food debris within the CBD. Initial treatment may be endoscopic, but biliary diversion is needed for those with recurrent symptoms.

Spontaneous dissection of the abdominal aorta.

Acute dissection of the aorta is a vascular surgical emergency. The majority of dissections originate in the thoracic aorta. Dissection originating in the infrarenal abdominal aorta is very rare and, given the vagueness of presenting symptoms of uncomplicated dissection, diagnosis is very difficult in the early stages. In the absence of a pulsatile abdominal mass, acute uncomplicated aortic dissection should be considered in the differential diagnosis of sudden onset of abdominal and back pain. We report a case of spontaneous infrarenal abdominal aortic dissection occurring in an ostensibly normal aorta, and discuss the diagnostic dilemma and subsequent management of the patient.