ABSTRACT
Latent tuberculous infection [LTBI] lacks a solid gold standard in its diagnosis and many clinicians rely upon tuberculin testing, however there has been an increasing interest in depending on Interferon Gamma Release Assays especially Quantiferon-Gold [QFT-G]. Since chronic renal failure [CRF] poses an important health problem in Egypt and taking into consideration the immuno compromisation caused by this condition, LTBI detection emerged as an important health concern in those patients. In this study, the aim was to find which tool was better in the detection of LTBI in CRF patients. Forty patients with chronic renal failure and on hemodialysis, with exclusion of active tuberculosis and other immuno compromisation conditions were tested for LTBI by tuberculin skin test [TST] and QFT-G. 25% of the tested showed LTBI. It was found that although both tests gave comparable results, yet there was a discrepancy between both. TST + /QFT + group was 10%, TST + /QFT- group was 5%, TST-/QFT+ was 10% and TST-/QFT- group was 75%.In Chronic renal failure and probably any immuno compromisation setting, it would be better to perform both tuberculin and Quantiferon tests to detect latent tuberculous infection
Subject(s)
Humans , Male , Female , Kidney Failure, Chronic , Comparative StudyABSTRACT
To study the effect of clonidine hydrochloride [catapress] on mepivacaine subarachnoid block, 40 patients were divided into 2 groups. The first [control group] received mepivacaine alone [120 mg] and the other [clonidine group] received mepivacaine [120 mg] plus clonidine [150 mg] intrathecally. It was found that clonidine potentiated and prolonged the duration of sensory and motor blockade and can cause sedation of the patients without a greater effect on the hemodynamics than that produced by the local anesthetic alone