ABSTRACT
Background: Menstruation is said to be a physiological process in women. The word ‘menstruation’ was derived from a Latin word ‘menses’. Menstrual dysfunction was found to affect 75% of adolescent girls which includes dysmenorrhoea, menorrhagia and irregular cycles. Premenstrual syndrome constitutes a group of physical and emotional symptoms which occurs one week before menstrual cycle. It was found to be a cycle disorder which appears in the luteal phase. Adolescent girls are at high risk of developing premenstrual syndrome. Because of menstrual dysfunction and premenstrual syndrome, the adolescent girls are at high risk of menstrual morbidity.Methods: After getting approval from institutional ethical committee of Madras Medical College, the study was carried out in adolescent girls. The study was carried out by giving questionnaire in nearly 505 students for the duration of 6 months. The study participants were explained about the study. The questionnaire was structured so as to obtain information regarding the age at menarche, duration of cycle, awareness about menstruation, source of information regarding menstruation, practices during menstrual cycles, regarding menstrual problems and treatment practices.Results: The average age of participants was 17 years with an SD of 1.5. of 505 participants, about 6% had 45 days frequency, 10% had 38 days frequency and 2% had 60 days frequency of menstrual cycle. It was found around 1% had 8 days duration and 3% had 9 days duration of menstrual cycle. About 13% of Participants had mild flow, 7% had severe flow and 20% had variable quantity of menstrual flow.Conclusions: From this study, it was found that menstrual dysfunction were prevalent among adolescent girls. These were found to cause menstrual morbidity among adolescent girls. Hence it is necessary to educate and create awareness about menstrual morbidity among adolescent girls.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Hypertension is a long term medical conditionin which blood pressure in the arteries is persistently elevatedand it is a major health care burden. Long standing hypertensionleads to cardiovascular complications and cerebrovascularaccidents. It also causes neuronal disturbances affecting theautonomic nervous system. Isometric handgrip exercise testis a non-invasive physiological test which is done using ahandgrip dynamometer. It can be used to detect the impairmentin the autonomic activity which is seen in individuals who areprone to develop hypertension in the future. Thus, the aim ofthe present study was to assess the efficacy of isometric handexercise on blood pressure in identification of hypertensiverisk individuals and also to determine the role of handgripDynamometer in identifying hypertensive risk individuals.Material and methods: The present study was a cross-sectionalstudy done among 100 healthy normotensive individuals wastaken in the study. All participants were apparently healthy atthe time of isometric handgrip test. Cardiovascular parameterslike systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and heartrate were measured before the exercise after following allstandard precautions. The subjects were asked to perform theisometric handgrip exercise using the handgrip dynamometer.Blood pressure was recorded at three occasions– before thetest, during the test and 5 minutes after the test.Results: In the present study, out of 100 individuals, themean age was found to be 55 years among the hypertensiveindividuals. The mean weight was found to be around 78.4±15.0. The mean value of height was found to be 1.42± 0.06.The mean value of increase in SBP and the DBP duringisometric handgrip exercise was significantly higher than thebaseline values. The mean difference for SBP was 9.85 withp value 0.0003 which was observed to be highly significant.Conclusion: Isometric handgrip exercise test was found to beuseful as a screening test in identification of individuals at riskof developing hypertension.
ABSTRACT
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), a progressive and partially reversible disease, has drawn world-wide attention for its moderate prevalence rate and causing central and peripheral neuropathy. Considering its severity in causing visual pathway impairment, the present investigation was carried out to find out the functional integrity of the visual pathway through visual evoked potentials (VEP) and to determine the factors influencing the condition in COPD patients. A total of 30 COPD patients of both sexes, classified according to the severity of the disease based on spirometric indices, were subjected to VEP testing and series of wave forms were measured and compared with equal number of control subjects. The latency of N75 and P100 were prolonged (P<0.01) and the P100 amplitude was reduced significantly (P<0.01) in COPD patients. Thus, the influence of COPD causing the optic neuropathy is apparent from the significant VEP changes. Non-invasive procedure can possibly be utilized as a routine screening test for COPD patients for better medical care.