Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is characterized as a chronic inflammatory disease indicated by stiffness, pain, inflammation, and impaired mobility. This results in joint impairment, poor workability, productivity, and afterward, it curtails the quality and expectancy of life of an individual. The aim of this research is to assess the quality of life of Pakistan women with RA and assess various factors affecting it.Methods: It was a cross-sectional study conducted in the Orthopedics department of the Indus Hospital and Health Network, Karachi Pakistan, where we assessed quality of life in sample of women with RA. A consecutive sampling technique was used to enrol women with rheumatoid arthritis who were seen in the Orthopedics outpatient clinic during the study period (February to May 2021).Results: Of the 134 women with RA, 72.39% of women were unemployed, 54.48% of women had family monthly income of 16000 PKR or more and 44.03% of women reported at least one comorbidity other than RA. According to linear regression analyses, women having RA with severe disease activity tended to have tended to have low physical functioning, vitality, emotional wellbeing, social functioning, pain and general health as compared to patients with remission, low disease and moderate disease activity. Absence of family support in disease management can impact vitality and emotional wellbeing with decrease in scores of -85.20 and -120.66 respectively.Conclusions: Guidelines need to developed and implemented for assessing psychological domains of these patients for assessment of quality of life. This will help in maintaining and improving QoL of women with RA.
Introduction: Various modalities are now being used to manage postoperative pain, such as regional nerve blocks techniques, continuous epidural analgesia, patient-controlled analgesia, opioids, and systemic nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. This study compared the mean postoperative pain score between ultrasound-guided transversus abdominis plane (TAP) block and a local anesthetic wound infiltration at the surgical incision site.Methodology: A prospective, comparative, randomized controlled trial (RCT) was carried out from February 2021 to September 2021. The study was conducted in the anesthesia department of Dow University of Health Sciences, Karachi, Pakistan. Patients aged 18-80 years presenting with elective surgery of (both direct and indirect) inguinal hernia repair were enrolled in the study. Participants were randomly assigned into one of the two groups that are local anesthetic wound infiltration (Group A) and TAP block (Group B). The mean pain score was assessed using a visual analog scale and compared between the two groups.Results: The study included 168 patients grouped in two different groups. The mean age in Group A was 43.87 (+17.21), and Group B was 47.01 (±15.37). Mean pain scores in groups A and B were 6.36±1.94 vs 4.51 ± 1.99 (p-value=0.001). The pain rescue medications were given to 57.14% of patients in Group A and 34.52% of patients in Group B, and it was significantly different in the two groups (p-value=0.003). It was found that patients in Group A reported more severe pain (41.67%) than patients in Group B (10.71%).Conclusion: When compared to local anesthetic wound infiltration, ultrasound-guided TAP block had better analgesic activity compared to local anesthetic wound infiltration.
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