ABSTRACT
Background: Periodic epidemiological studies are necessary to analyse the patterns of poisoning in each region. The aim of this study was to characterise the acute poisoning cases admitted to a tertiary care centre in coastal Karnataka.Methods: All the adult patients admitted to the emergency department of the hospital during the past five years were included. Data was obtained from the hospital medical records and included socio-demographic characteristics, causative agents, mode of poisoning, route of poisoning, time of arrival to the hospital and factors determining mortality.Results: Of the 169 patients admitted with acute poisoning, majority belonged to young age group (46.7%) and were females (50.9%). Poisoning was more common among the, married population (59.2%) and literates (62.7%). Clustering of cases were found during summer (36.7%) and monsoon (35.5%). Ingestion was the commonest route (98.2%) and the intention was suicidal (82.2%) in majority of the patients. Drug overdose (49.1%) was the commonest agent followed by pesticides (14.8%) and rodenticides (12.4%). Acetaminophen and antipsychotic drugs were the commonly used drugs. Psychiatric illness was found in a significant number of patients (37.9%). The most common symptom was nausea and vomiting (40.2%). Mortality was seen in 7.7% of the patients. Factors contributing to mortality were male gender, intake of pesticides, renal failure and Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS).Conclusions: There is an increase in the number of cases abusing drugs and medications. There is an urgent need to address the susceptive young population and patients with underlying psychiatric illness to reduce the number of poisoning cases in this region.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Sex determination from unidentified human skeletal elements is a challenge for forensic investigators and anthropologists. This study aims to detect the best variable for sex determination from different parameters of femur. Materials and Methods: Study was conducted with 75 (40 males and 35 females) femora of known sex from the Department of Anatomy. Eight parameters were measured and subjected to univariate statistics, multivariate analysis such as discriminant analysis and logistic regression analysis employing SPSS 13.00 version program. Results: The epicondylar breadth, antero-posterior diameter of lateral condyle, proximal breadth, vertical diameter of head and neck are statistically significant for dimorphism (p<0.05). Discriminant analysis shows an overall accuracy of 62.7% and stepwise discriminant analysis shows an accuracy of 65.3%.Under stepwise analysis epicondylar breadth was selected as the best discriminant variable for sex prediction. Discussion: Results implies that epicondylar breadth of femur is the best parameter for sex determination which agrees with available literature in different population. It can be correlated to delayed ossification of growing lower end in males giving higher value. Due to early maturity dimorphism is less in the upper end of the bone. Conclusion: The results of present study confirm that epicondylar breadth is one of the good parameters in femur for sexing in unidentified skeleton.