Nutritional status of children attending OPD at tertiary care hospital in Katihar, Bihar.

Background: Despite India’s remarkable economic growth over the last decade, many children still struggle to meet their basic needs, include access to sufficient food and health care .In this context it was important to get a more recent data on child nutritional status. Aims & Objective: (1) Prevalence of malnutrition in children under 5 years of age coming to Pediatric OPD at Katihar medical college; (2) Age and sex most severely affected by malnutrition; (3) Identify major risk factors associated with malnutrition in the population under study. Material and Methods: Institution based cross-sectional study was carried out in Pediatric OPD of Katihar medical college The median weight for height, height for age and weight for height of NCHS standard were used as references anthropometric indices. A total of 260 randomly selected children were covered in the study of 20 days. Results: Prevalence of underweight (30%), stunted (74.2%) and wasting (41.9%). The major risk factors affecting nutritional status include mother’s age, mothers and fathers education, monthly per capita income, pre lacteal feeds, birth order and duration of breast feeding. The study demonstrates multiple risk factors affecting nutrition status. Conclusion: The study demonstrates multiple risk factors affecting nutrition status. A more elaborate community based study would help to find out prevalence of malnutrition in children of Katihar and it should be done at regular interval in order to monitor the situation.

Epidemiological aspects of acute childhood poisoning among patients attending a hospital at Kolkata.

A retrospective study from a tertiary care teaching hospital in Kolkata revealed 3.6% of total paediatric admissions were due to poisoning. Majority of the cases included oral/chemical poisoning followed by biological/envennomation. Kerosene was the commonest among all poisoning. Most of the cases were accidental.

A study of mycetoma in eastern India.

Forty consecutive cases of mycetoma were studied with respect to clinico-epidemiological, histopathological and radiological features. The age of the patients ranged from 17 to 57 years mean being 32.4 +/- 8.68. The disease was equally distributed amongst the sexes. Most of the patients had a rural background and the disease occurred mainly among farmers and housewives. Actinomycetes (32 cases. 80%) were found to be the main pathogenic organism and Eumycetes in 4 cases (20%) only. Clinical features were more or less the same irrespective of the aetiologic agent, consisting of local swelling with discharging sinuses. History of trauma was present in only 20% cases and 80% were incidental. Foot (28/40 i.e. 70%) was the commonest site of infection. Radiological bony involvement was detected in 14 out of 18 cases examined (38.88%). Out of the 32 radiographed patients of actinomyetoma 10(31.25%) showed bony involvement whereas all the four. Eumycetoma cases radiographed, had bony involvement. The notable bony changes were sclerosis, erosions, periosteal thickening and osteoporosis.