ABSTRACT
Background: Satisfaction is an important element in the evaluation of services rendered by a hospital. Patient satisfaction is as important as other clinical health measures and is a primary means of measuring the effectiveness of health care delivery. It refers to the patient's state of being adequately rewarded. Patient satisfaction is a measure of success of the services being provided by the hospitals. Objective of the study was to assess the satisfaction levels of the people utilizing various services provided in secondary and tertiary health care delivery settings.Methods: Observational hospital based comparative study conducted among Inpatients aged 18 yrs and above from different wards who are discharged during the study period and are willing to participate in the study at Secondary and tertiary health care centres of East Godavari District during May 2015 to April 2016. Sample size was calculated using n-master version 2.0. Sample size calculation was based on assumption that the prevalence of patient satisfaction as 50% with mean difference of satisfaction of 15%, confidence interval of 95%, α - error of 5%, power 90%, with effect size 0.3, sample size estimated was 234 in each setting resulting in a cumulative sample size of 702.Results: It was found that 64.52% of inpatients of District Hospital, Rajahmundry, have expressed neutrality or dissatisfaction regarding overall admission services as compared to 49.14% in Government General Hospital, Kakinada and 14.52% in Area Hospital, Rampachodavaram.Conclusions: The overall patient satisfaction was observed to be around 80% for all the three hospitals.
ABSTRACT
Objective: To investigate the protective role of β-Carotene against cisplatin induced cardiotoxicity in male albino rats. Methods: Various biochemical parameters such as Creatine kinase-MB, Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), Alkaline phosphatase (ALP), Aspartate aminotransferase (AST), Alanine aminotransferase (ALT), Triglycerides (TG) and Total cholesterol (TC) are being assessed. Also the levels of the in vivo antioxidants such as Reduced glutathione (GSH), Catalase (CAT), and Malondialdehyde (MDA) in the post mitochondrial supernatant of heart were measured. In addition, the histopathological studies were performed to study the protective activity of β-carotene. Results: Cisplatin administration has shown the elevated levels of the cardiac markers and diminished the endogenous antioxidant levels when compared with the normal rats. β-carotene treatment showed the inhibitory effect on the free radicals showing decreased levels of the cardiac markers like CK-MB, LDH, AST, ALT and ALP. The β-carotene treated rats showed significant (p<0.001) decrease in lipid peroxidation in both prophylactic and curative groups when compared to the cisplatin group. Also showed a significant (p<0.05, p<0.001) increase in the levels of GSH in prophylactic and curative group respectively when compared with the cisplatin group. Both prophylactic and curative groups have shown a significant (p<0.001) increase in the levels of CAT. Further, the histopathological studies confirm the protective effect of β-carotene. Conclusion: These findings justify the biological and traditional uses of β-carotene as confirmed by its promising radical scavenging activity against cisplatin induced cardiotoxicity.