Brainstem auditory evoked potedntial the normal and mentally retarded and its relationship to intelligence

This study selected randomly a group of mentally retarded children consisting of 33 male members ranging in age between 107-169 months in addition to 29 normal children matched for age and sex and served as controls. Subjects of both groups were free from hearing h and icaps and all were subjected to brain stem auditory evoked potential [BAEP] measurement. Raven progressive matrices test was used for the evaluation of intelligence aiming to find out any possible differentiating characteristics between normal and mentally retarded children as well as establishing the correlation if present between the level of IQ and brain stem evoked wave structure

Pulmonary mycosis in chronic obstructive air way diseases and effects of some medicinal plant extracts

Pulmonary mycosis is not uncommon finding in patients complaining of chronic obstructive airway diseases. Excess use of corticosteroids enhances the infection. Candida and Aspergillus species were the predominant strains isolated. The isolated fungi were sensitive [in vitro] in different degrees to different medicinal plant extracts

Study of load-independent index of left ventricular myocardial contractility in infants with isolated ventricular septal defect and congestive heart failure

Twenty-nine infants with isolated VSD [15 symptomatic and 14 asymptomatic] and with age ranged from 5 to 14 months were compared with 15 control infants, to determine if symptoms of congestive heart failure were due to depressed contractility or defect size or both. We found that the symptomatic infants had a significant increased heart rate and respiratory rate [P < 0.01] and a significant lower systolic blood pressure [P < 0.05] than the other groups. The symptomatic patients had non significant increased ESD, EDD and End-systolic stress [ESS] than other groups of the study but there was no significant difference between the three groups as regards fractional shortening [FS] and velocity of circumferential fiber shortening [VCFc]. We found that the left ventricular contractility in the symptomatic patients was not depressed as the predicted VCFc was lower than the measured VCFc, at any given ESS. The ESS/VCFc curve slope of the symptomatic patients [-0.005] was less than asymptomatic patients [-0.009] and the control infants [-0.012] and shifted to the right, due to increased LV preload and wall stress as the symptomatic patients had a significant bigger VSD and a significant increased pulmonary/ systemic flow ratio [Qp/Qs] than asymptomatic patients [P < 0.01]. It is concluded that the left ventricular contractility in patients with VSD and CHF was not depressed and their symptoms may be related to increased pulmonary flow due to increased left- to -right shunt through a big VSD

Value of lysozyme [muramidase] in pleural effusion and serum of children

The study included 55 patients with pleural effusion [18 transudate, 27 bacterial empyema and 10 tuberculous exudate] their ages ranged from 1-10 years. Also 20 apparently healthy children of matched age and sex were taken as control. No significant difference was found in the levels of serum lysozyme between disease and control groups. There was a significant increase in pleural fluid lysozyme levels in bacterial empyema than in transudate or tuberculous exudates [P = 0.000, P = 0.001] respectively. There was also a significant increase in pleural fluid lysozyme in cases of tuberculous effusion when compared with transudate group [P = 0.002]. Pleural fluid-to-serum lysozyme [PL/SL] ratio was 0.81 +/- 0.11 mg/dL in cases of transudate, 11.69 +/- 2.48 mg/dL in bacterial empyema and 1.98 +/- 0.75 mg/dL in tuberculous effusion groups. The existence of a raised PL/SL ratio in cases of tuberculous and bacterial empyema groups suggested important local synthesis of lysozyme. Comparing patients of tuberculous effusion with patients of transudate a PL/SL ratio higher than 1.4 showed a sensitivity of 90%, specificity of 100%, positive predictive value of 100%, negative predictive value of 94.7% and accuracy of 96.4% for discrimination of tuberculous effusion. All of these suggest that the determination of pleural fluid lysozyme and PL/SL ratio is a simple, fast method for obtaining corroborative information in the differential diagnosis of tuberculous pleurisy from transudate