Chittagong General Hospital

Efficiently detecting obstetric outcomes, such as preterm birth or mode of delivery, is crucial for enhancing mother and newborn health. Proactive screening, identification, and prevention in asymptomatic pregnant women exhibiting risk factors for preterm birth or c-section delivery can mitigate incidence and fatality rates. This study thoroughly reviewed prediction models for obstetric outcomes, described the EHG signal acquisition protocols, pre-processing methods, feature extraction from EHG, and model properties, and compared their quality to establish the most effective prediction model for clinical decision-making. For this study, the biomedical databases (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase) of published publications were searched from December 2000 to February 2025. In addition to electrohysterography, other search terms to consider are electrohysterogram, uterine electromyography, Term-preterm labor, birth delivery mode, and EHG in machine learning. Based on a literature review, the prevailing recording technique for acquiring EHG signals across various applications, including pregnancy monitoring, preterm risk evaluation, and birth delivery mode detection, commonly employs four bipolar electrodes. A bandpass filter of minimum bandwidth of 0.1 to 4 Hz is most commonly used for pre-process the EHG signal. High discriminative performance was reported in 5 studies, with an Area Under the Curve (AUC) ranging from 0.93 to 0.99. A single classifier may suffice for predicting obstetric outcomes using an EHG signal, eliminating the need for a combined classifier. A total of 98.5

The eight countries of South Asia share similar backgrounds, together with similar health care related problems and a lack of medical facilities. They also have a total of 828 medical institutions both in the public and private sectors but sadly, their research output is generally thought to be poor both in quality and quantity. We analyzed the research output from this region in terms of the number of publications in indexed journals, their citations and the h-index of the institutions using the Scopus database between 201217. These were compared with ten randomly selected leading institutes of the world. Only 353 (42.7%) had produced a single indexed research article in the six years of the study period. The cumulative research output of all the countries during this period was 97,170, the biggest contributor being India (86.3%) followed by Pakistan (9.9%) and Bangladesh (1.4%). In terms of the mean number of the citations and h-index, India led with 1775 citations per institute with a mean h-index of 12.1. Despite the immense health problems facing the countries, the overall research output from the South Asian countries is poor as evidenced by the cumulative number of publications or a comparison on a global scale. This needs urgent and serious attention. We suggest that intercountry research collaborations, student exchanges, compulsory research projects in undergraduate and postgraduate curricula, adequate funding, and incentives for research publication may be some of the ways forward.

Thalassemia is one of the commonest inherited diseases in Bangladesh. The birth of a thalassemic child places considerable strain, not only on the affected child and its family but also on the community and the nation at large. To reduce the burden of the society and to reduce the disease incidence by providing genetic counseling, detection of carrier is important. The present study evaluates the role of ‘Naked Eye Single Tube Red Cell Osmotic Fragility Test’ (NESTROFT) in detecting ß-thalassemia trait. The current study is a cross sectional study done during the period of September 2008 to August 2009. The study subjects were sibs, parents and relatives of thalassemia patients of age more than 1 year attending Pediatric department of Chittagong Medical College Hospital. Sample size was 50. Here subjects with lowered osmotic fragility test were detected and later on Hb- electrophoresis was done. All the data were recorded and analyzed by SPSS programme. The Sensitivity, Specificity and predictive value of positive and negative tests were computed and they were 92.6%, 80%, 92.6% and 80% respectively. False positive cases were found. The present study found NESTROFT to be both sensitive and reasonably specific and of high negative predictive value. However, multicenter study with large sample is needed to recommend NESTROFT as a single screening test for detection of ß-thalassemia trait.J Bangladesh Coll Phys Surg 2018; 36(4): 145-152

Maternal vitamin D insufficiency is not uncommon. Usual causes of maternal deficiency in vitamin D and or calcium are due to cultural modifications in their diets or clothing habits. Infant born to mothers who are on breastfeeding are also at risk of developing vitamin D deficiency, hypocalcemia and seizure. We present a case of an infant with hypocalcemic seizures secondary to vitamin D deficiency.Hypocalcemic seizure may occur in term or preterm neonates due to maternal vitamin D insufficiency. It is not common to present with hypocalcemic seizures at 4 to 5 months age in an otherwise healthy child with uneventful neonatal period.

We describe 70 cases of monocled cobra (Naja kaouthia) bite admitted to Chittagong Medical College Hospital, Bangladesh. The biting snakes were identified by examining the dead snake and/or detecting N. kaouthia venom antigens in patients' serum. Bites were most common in the early morning and evening during the monsoon (May–July). Ligatures were routinely applied to the bitten limb before admission. Thirty-seven patients consulted traditional healers, most of whom made incisions around the bite site. Fifty-eight patients experienced severe neurotoxicity and most suffered swelling and pain of the bitten limb. The use of an Indian polyvalent antivenom in patients exhibiting severe neurotoxicity resulted in clinical improvement but most patients experienced moderate-to-severe adverse reactions. Antivenom did not influence local blistering and necrosis appearing in 19 patients; 12 required debridement. Edrophonium significantly improved the ability of patients to open the eyes, endurance of upward gaze, and peak expiratory flow rate suggesting that a longer-acting anticholinesterase drug (neostigmine) could be recommended for first aid. The study suggested that regionally appropriate antivenom should be raised against the venoms of the major envenoming species of Bangladesh and highlighted the need to improve the training of staff of local medical centers and to invest in the basic health infrastructure in rural communities.