pattern of injuries among the victims of the Bam earthquake

On December 26, 2003 an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale, shook the city of Bam in the south east of Iran and killed more than 40000 people and nearly 30000 were injured. This is an epidemiological study performed on the victims of Bam earthquake to analyze different types of injuries of patients admitted in Kerman hospitals. In a retrospective cross-sectional study the medical records of 1250 victims of Bam earthquake admitted in Kerman hospitals from December 26, 2003 till 21 March, 2004 were reviewed and general demographic data such as age, sex, date of admission, type and anatomical site of injuries, diagnoses and complications were recorded. More than half of the patients were male. The mean age was 29.28 +/- 11.89 years. Lower limb injuries [40.8%] and pelvic injuries [26.2%] were the most common. The least common injury was chest injury [10.9%]. More than 50% of patients had fractures. There were associations between chest injuries, vertebral column injuries and abdominal injuries and between vertebral column, chest and skull fractures. The numbers of injury and fracture locations for each patient were 0.186 +/- 0.11 and 0.0886 +/- 0.098, respectively. The study of individual factors and associations between different locations of injuries indicates a careful physical examinations and attention to special groups. It is important to use findings of epidemiologic studies on disasters to establish well-organized crisis registration system for the next disasters

effects of fumitory parviflora extract on gastric acid and pepsin secretion in rat

Fumitory-parviflora is a plant from papaveracea family that is used for treatment of some GI tract diseases. So far there hasn't been a study performed on the effects of extract of fumitory-parviflora on gastric acid and pepsin secretion. This study is designed to define the effect of the extract of fumitory-parviflora on basal and pentagastrin induced gastric acid and pepsin secretion in rat. Both of the groups were anesthetized with sodium thiopental. The test group received 600 mg/kg, IP fumitory-parviflora extract. After tracheostomy and laparotomy gastric effluents were collected by wash out technique in 15 minute intervals and total titrable acid was measured by acid titrator. The pepsin content was measured by Anson method. Pentagastrin [25 micro g/kg, IP] was used to stimulate the secretion of acid and pepsin The results of this experiment showed no significant differences between basal acid and pepsin secretion in group that received extracts of fumitory-parviflora in comparison to the control group. According to the results, there was a significant difference between amount of basal and stimulated acid secretion in the control group but not in the test group. There was significant increase of pepsin secretion after stimulation in comparison to basal state in both groups. Also this difference in the control group is significantly more than the test group. Fumitory-parviflora prohibts the stimulatory effect of pentagastrin on acid and pepsin secretion