Gall bladder sludge and stones in multitransfused Egyptian thalassaemic patients

One hundred Egyptian beta-thalassaemic patients on a long-term transfusion/chelation programme were evaluated for the prevalence of all bladder sludge and stones and the associated risk factors. Fifty healthy individuals served as controls. Abdominal ultrasonography revealed that 14% of the thalassaemic patients had gall bladder sludge or stones [6% stones and 8% sludge]. The thalassaemic patients with this complication were older, had a higher prevalence of gall bladder symptoms, higher levels of pretransfusion haemoglobin, larger amounts of transfused red cells, and more were regularly transfused. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that the presence that gall bladder symptoms and the amount of transfused red cells were the only significant predictors of the occurrence of gall bladder sludge or stones

Study of the efficacy of a new universal intravenous fluid in the rehydration of cases of acute infantile diarrhea

This study aimed to creating a new "universal replacement fluid" for use in rehydration of children with acute diarrhea. Phase I of the study included testing of three different i.v. fluids having different glucose and electrolyte contents on 90 infants aged 3-24 months randomly allocated to three groups and suffering from severe dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. However, none of them proved to be completely satisfactory from the viewpoint of safety and adequacy. Phase II involved the trial of a newly tailored universal fluid in which the defects discovered in the three tested ones of phase I were avoided. This phase included 40 severely dehydrated infants and proved that this new fluid was satisfactory from the clinical and laboratory aspects as it could achieve correction off serum sodium, potassium and acid-base balance. The results are discussed in details