Introduction: Dramatic growth of the aging population resulted in an increased number of mentaldisorders and such data are limited in Nepal. The objective is to find out the psychiatric morbiditiesof elderly out-patients attending Baglung, Kusma, Walling, and Dumre out-reach clinics in GandakiProvince of Nepal. Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in 392 patients attending out-reachclinics of Baglung, Kusma, Walling, and Dumre of Gandaki Province for one year with the convenientsampling method. Ethical approval was taken from the Institutional Review Committee of ManipalCollege of Medical Sciences, Pokhara. The diagnosis was done according to the InternationalClassification of Disease-10 guidelines. Epi-info 7 was used and point estimate at 95% ConfidenceInterval was calculated along with frequency and proportion for binary data and the analysis wasdone. Results: The prevalence of neurotic, stress-related, and somatoform disorders 145 (37.0%) wasmaximum followed by mood disorders 111 (28.3%). Maximum cases were in between 66 and 75years, Brahmin and Chhetri caste, females, married, and from an extended nuclear family. Thereis more prevalence of female gender in all psychiatric diagnoses except in mental and behavioraldisorders due to psychoactive substance use. There is more prevalence of age groups of patients lessthan or equal to 75 years in all the psychiatric diagnosis. Conclusions: Neurotic, stress-related, and somatoform disorders were the most common diagnosis.The risk of development of certain disorders based on gender and age group of the patients wouldbe helpful for case identification.
Introduction: Ocular allergic conditions are mostly recurrent and the drugs prescribed, especially corticosteroids, have serious side effects. Therefore, when maximal tolerated topical and systemic medications are unable to control allergic conjunctivitis, a skin prick test for allergens should be conducted and patients should be taught to avoid these allergens. Objective: To find out the prevalence of common allergens inciting ocular allergic diseases in Nepal. Subjects and methods: A total of 13,376 skin prick tests were performed on 76 patients suffering from different chronic recurrent ocular allergic conjunctivitis with 176 common allergens (pollens, fungi, insects, dusts, danders, fabrics/ feathers, food, parthenium leaves, tobacco and mite). Buffer saline was used as a negative control while histamine acid phosphate was used as a positive control. Grading of the skin prick test reaction was done by comparison to the histamine positive control. Only markedly positive reactions were considered positive. Relevant data were entered into the excel spreadsheet and analyzed with the Stata-12 commercial package. The association between allergic conditions and socio-demographic, environmental and other co-variates were tested by the chi-square test. Results: The common offenders found in the study were mite (42.11 %) followed by fabrics/ feathers (20.39 %), dusts (18.18 %), pollen (17.05 %), non-juicy food (15.02 %), dander (13.60 %), juicy food (11.64 %) and fungus (9.87 %), and tobacco (6.58 %), parthenium leaves (5.26 %) and insects (3.17 %) were less common offenders. Conclusions: All ocular allergy patients should undergo skin prick tests to find out the allergens causing their allergy and then receive specific immunological treatment (SIT). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/nepjoph.v6i1.10759 Nepal J Ophthalmol 2014; 6 (2): 6-23
Introduction: The prevalence of vitamin B12 deficiency in depression is not clear and more research is needed. Objectives: The objective of this study is to find the prevalence of deficiency of vitamin B12 level in the depressed patient. The second objective is to find the prevalence of deficiency of vitamin B12 according to different socio-demographic variables. Methodology: The patients diagnosed as depressive episodes according to the International Classification of Disease – 10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders were selected from the Psychiatric Out-Patient Department of Manipal Teaching Hospital, Pokhara. The proforma was used to collect the socio-demographic profile of the patient. The serum sample of the 50 patients was sent for vitamin B12 estimation. Serum concentrations less than 239 pg/ml was considered deficient in this study. Results: The overall prevalence of vitamin B12 deficiency was 22% in the depressed patients. The mean age of the total patients were 39.2 years with the standard deviation of 13.75 years. Vitamin B12 deficiency was more prevalent in the socio-demographic variables like age above 61 years, Brahmin and Chhetri caste, female gender, unmarried groups, and in the patients living in the urban area as compared to other variables. Conclusion: The result shows that vitamin B12 deficiency is common in the patients with depression. Clinicians should be aware of the risk for vitamin B12 deficiency in depressive patients. As this study was done in limited geographical area and sample size being small, further larger studies are needed before generalizing these results.
Introduction: Ocular trauma is an important worldwide preventable public health problem which may lead to permanent visual impairment. This study aims to determine the demographics, clinical profile and visual outcome of severe eye injuries. Methods: This study was conducted at a tertiary centre from January 2013 to August 2014. Cases of severe eye injuries hospitalized at or presenting to emergency/OPD were included in the study. All cases underwent detailed examination and necessary intervention. Cases were followed upto 3 months and final visual outcome was evaluated. Results: The study comprised of 60 individuals (65 eyes); 76.7% males and 23.3% females. Out of 60 cases, the age group 1-9 years had the highest occurrence with 23.33% followed by 20-29 years with 20% and majority were students 45%. Impact with stone was the commonest cause of injury reported on 21.7% followed by road traffic accident (RTA) 20%. Closed-globe injuries accounted for 36.6% and open-globe injuries for 33.3%. At the time of presentation, visual acuity of less than 6/18 was seen in 71.6% and at follow up was seen in 45%. Among total cases, 63.3% eyes were managed conservatively, 30% eyes underwent surgery and 6.7% were referred to higher centre for vitreoretinal surgeries. Conclusions: Severe eye injuries were seen in 0.13% of total eye injuries. Paediatric and young adult males formed the majority of victims. Stone and road traffic accidents were the common causes. One fourth of the eyes were blind. Primary prevention and management of the affected cases is the clear need.
Background: Refractive error is one of the most common causes of the visual impairment and second leading cause of treatable blindness. The objective of the study was to determine the magnitude of refractive errors in children. Methods: This was a hospital based cross-sectional study conducted on 254 children attending Ophthalmology OPD of Manipal Teaching Hospital, Pokhara. The children whose visual acuity was worse than 6/6 but improved with pinhole were included in this study. Vision test, retinoscopy and subjective refraction was done in all subjects and cycloplegic refraction was done when needed. Statistical analysis was carried out using Epi-info version 7. Results: The commonest type of refractive error was astigmatism (46.06%) followed by myopia (42.31%). Majority of children had low grade of refractive errors (46.85%). Among the children, “with the rule astigmatism” was maximum (27.56%). Majority of children were in the age between 11 to 15 years (77.95%). The refractive error was seen more in female (63.78%). Among the children of refractive errors, 29.13% had family history, 33.46% had given the history of wearing spectacles and 10.24% children had amblyopia. There was statistically significant association between refractive errors and age groups, history of wearing spectacles, amblyopia and grading of refractive errors. However, there was no statistically significant association of refractive error with gender, residence and family history. Conclusions: Astigmatism was the common type of refractive error followed by myopia. This study emphasizes the importance of detection of refractive error in children.
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