Neurological monitoring and sedation protocols in the Liver Intensive Care Unit.

Patients with liver disease often have alteration of neurological status which requires admission to an intensive care unit. Patients with acute liver failure (ALF), acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) and rarely cirrhosis are at risk of cerebral edema. These patients require prompt assessment of neurological status including assessment of intra-cranial pressure (ICP) and monitoring metabolic parameters like arterial/venous ammonia levels, serum creatinine and serum electrolytes so that timely specific therapy for raised ICP can be instituted to prevent permanent neurological dysfunction. The overall aims of neuromonitoring and sedation protocols in a liver intensive care unit are to identify the level of multifactorial metabolic encephalopathy, individualize sedation and analgesia requirements for patients on mechanical ventilation, institute specific therapy to correct the neurological insult in ALF and ACLF, provide clear physiological data for guided therapy of drugs like muscle relaxants, antiepileptics, and cerebral edema reducing agents, and assist with overall prognostication. In this review article we will outline the clinical scenarios related to liver disease requiring intensive care and neuromonitoring, current techniques of neurological assessment, sedation protocols and point of care tests which enable the treating physician and intensivist guide therapy for raised ICP.

Transfer Learning Based Lightweight Ensemble Model for Imbalanced Breast Cancer Classification.

Automated classification of breast cancer can often save lives, as manual detection is usually time-consuming & expensive. Since the last decade, deep learning techniques have been most widely used for the automatic classification of breast cancer using histopathology images. This paper has performed the binary and multi-class classification of breast cancer using a transfer learning-based ensemble model. To analyze the correctness and reliability of the proposed model, we have used an imbalance IDC dataset, an imbalance BreakHis dataset in the binary class scenario, and a balanced BACH dataset for the multi-class classification. A lightweight shallow CNN model with batch normalization technology to accelerate convergence is aggregated with lightweight MobileNetV2 to improve learning and adaptability. The aggregation output is fed into a multilayer perceptron to complete the final classification task. The experimental study on all three datasets was performed and compared with the recent works. We have fine-tuned three different pre-trained models (ResNet50, InceptionV4, and MobilNetV2) and compared it with the proposed lightweight ensemble model in terms of execution time, number of parameters, model size, etc. In both the evaluation phases, it is seen that our model outperforms in all three datasets.

Intravenous BCAA Infusion Does Not Lead to a Sustained Recovery From Overt HE in ACLF - An Open Label Randomized Clinical Trial.

Background: Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) in acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. We conducted a prospective, randomized controlled clinical trial to study the efficacy of intravenous branched chain amino acids (IV-BCAA) with lactulose versus lactulose alone for improvement in HE at 24 h, day 3, and day 7. The primary outcome was an improvement in encephalopathy by ≥ 1 grade at 72 h. Patients and methods: European association for study of liver (EASL) defined ACLF patients with overt HE were assessed and randomized into the experimental arm (IV-BCAA - 500 mL/day for 3 days + Lactulose; n = 39) and the comparator arm (Lactulose alone; n = 37). Six patients developed COVID-19 after randomization and were excluded (4-experimental arm and 2-comparator arm). Results: Of 222 screened patients, 70 (35 in each arm) were included in the analysis. Baseline characteristics, including HE grade (2.9 ± 0.7 vs 2.8 ± 0.7; P = 0.86) and (chronic liver failure) CLIF-C ACLF score (54.2 ± 5.6 vs 54.8 ± 5.7; P = 0.65), were similar. Overall survival was 40% at 28 days (48.5% vs 31.4%; P = 0.14). Improvement in hepatic encephalopathy scoring algorithm (HESA) by ≥ 1 grade at 24 h occurred in 14 patients (40%) in the BCAA arm and 6 patients (17.1%) in the control group (P = 0.03) which translated to a shorter intensive care unit (ICU) stay. The median change in HESA at 24 h was greater in the BCAA arm than the control arm (P = 0.006), which was not sustained at days 3 or 7. Ammonia levels did not correlate with the grade of HE (Spearman's correlation coefficient (ρ) = - 0.0843; P = 0.29). Conclusion: Intravenous BCAA does not lead to a sustained improvement in HE grade in ACLF. Trial registration no: NCT04238416 (clinicaltrials.gov).

Hypercoagulability on thromboelastography after living donor hepatectomy-The true side of the coin.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Coagulation dynamics after donor hepatectomy are complex. Having complete knowledge of the actual changes in the coagulation status during donor hepatectomy is important to prevent complications such as pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, and bleeding. Hence, the present study aimed to study the coagulation dynamics following open donor hepatectomy both by thromboelastography (TEG) and conventional coagulation tests (CCT). METHODS: A total of 50 prospective liver donors were included. TEG and CCT [activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT), prothrombin time (PT), international normalised ratio (INR), fibrinogen, and platelet counts] were performed for each patient before surgery (baseline), on postoperative day (POD) 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10. RESULTS: TEG showed hypercoagulability in 28%, 38%, 30%, 46%, 42%, and 48% patients; in contrast INR showed hypocoagulability in 58%, 63%, 73%, 74%, 20%, and 0% patients on POD 0,1,2,3,5, and 10, respectively. Patients demonstrating hypercoagulability on TEG had significantly decreased reaction time (P = 0.004), significantly increased maximum amplitude (P < 0.001), and alpha angle value (P < 0.001). Postoperatively, INR, PT, and aPTT values increased significantly, while platelets and fibrinogen levels decreased significantly when compared to their baseline values. There was no coagulation-related postoperative complication in any of the patients. CONCLUSION: Hypercoagulability after donor hepatectomy is common. TEG showed hypercoagulability and did not show any hypocoagulability as suggested by the CCT. In patients undergoing donor hepatectomy, CCT may not reflect the actual changes incoagulation status and tests such as TEG should be performed to know the correct nature of changes in coagulation following donor hepatectomy.

Role of MRI Evaluation in Knee Injuries

Knee is a major weight bearing and largest joint that provides mobility and stability during physical activities as well as balance while standing. Due to its wide range of functions it is exposed to forces beyond its physiological range, and thus bone and soft tissue of knee are at risk of injuries. We wanted to study MRI appearances of cruciate ligaments and meniscal tears in cases of knee injuries and correlate the MRI findings of knee injury with clinical observations/other radiological investigations/ arthroscopic findings. We also wanted to evaluate the sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV and accuracy of MRI in detecting knee injuries taking arthroscopy as gold standard (wherever performed).METHODSThis prospective diagnostic descriptive study was conducted in the Department of Radiodiagnosis of Maharishi Markandeshwar Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, MMDU, Mullana, among 100 patients presenting with knee injuries referred to Department of Radiodiagnosis for MR imaging. MR scans were carried out on 1.5 tesla MR machine Achieva (by Phillips Medical System) and studies were performed with the sense extremity coil. Arthroscopic knee surgery was performed in 39 patients. MR findings were correlated with clinical and arthroscopic findings wherever possible.RESULTSMR diagnosis of 100 cases was as follows: in ACL tear 50%; PCL tear 19%; MCL tear 17%; LCL tear 16%; MM tear 49%; LM tear 31%; Sensitivity, specificity, NPV, PPV and accuracy of MRI in detecting the knee injuries taking arthroscopy as gold standard are as follows ACL- 100%, 90.9%, 100%, 96.5% and 97.4 %; lateral meniscus-100%, 94.5%, 100%, 50% and 94.8%; medial meniscus 90.4%, 66.7%, 85.7%, 76% and 79.5% respectively. Correlation between MRI and arthroscopic findings regarding presence and absence of posterior cruciate ligament tear was highest with sensitivity -100%, specificity- 94.5%, NPV- 100% and accuracy-94.8%, There were 6 false positives for meniscus tear on MR examinations accounting for low positive predictive value (72%) of MR examination. Posterior horn tears of menisci are likely to be missed on arthroscopy. Out of 6 false positive cases of meniscus tear, 4 were located predominately in the posterior horn and 2 in the anterior horn. Thus, acceptance of MRI findings as false positive is controversial.CONCLUSIONSMRI is a useful non-invasive modality having high diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity and negative predictive value making it a very reliable screening test for diagnosis of internal derangements of knee joint. Thus, MRI saves many knees from unnecessary arthroscopies.

Prognostication in Traumatic Brain Injury- A Prospective Study of 100 Patients in Tertiary Care Hospital in Rural Area.

Traumatic brain injury is a major health issue responsible for considerable mortality and morbidity worldwide especially in subjects under the age of 40 yrs. It is important to assess and grade the TBI as soon as possible to guide management and decrease the comorbidities. Various guidelines have been issued by the neurosurgical societies to immediately assess and intervene when ever required. In this study, we have tried to assess the role of basal cisternal effacement in the management and prognosis of RTA patients, and hence tried to simplify the prognostication process and improve the patient management.METHODS100 subjects were studied who were having history of traumatic head injury. NCCT was done for all the patients using 128 slice Multidetector CT- Ingenuity (Philips Medical Systems, USA). Other parameters like pupillary reaction, GCS at the time of presentation, midline shift and associated fractures and bleed were assessed. All the patients were followed up till the time of discharge. The data so obtained was analysed.RESULTSParameters like age, pupillary reflex, GCS at presentation, associated intracranial bleed, associated cranial vault fractures and presence or absence of midline shift correlated well with the final outcome with p value consistently <0.05. We analysed that the degree of obliteration of perimesencephalic cistern was a good prognostic marker in traumatic head injury patients. 36% of patients had favourable outcome out of which none of the patients had obliterated perimesencephalic cistern or interpeduncular cisterns. 64% patients had unfavourable outcome out of which 60% and 48% had obliterated or partially obliterated perimesencephalic cisterns and interpeduncular cisterns respectively, and only 4% and 16% had normal perimesencephalic cisterns and interpeduncular cisterns respectively.CONCLUSIONSIt is important to investigate, grade and prognosticate traumatic head injury patients at the earliest. Our study and various other studies prove that various clinical predictors including age, Glasgow coma scale, and pupil reactivity correlate with outcome of patient. Presence of midline shift, intraventricular haemorrhage, and obliteration of cisterns in patients of traumatic brain injury also correlate with the outcome and can be used; thus, making the prognostication process much easier. These findings can be used on the first day of admission itself.