Making healthy baby contests more objective.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: To assess the objectivity of the criteria chosen to judge a healthy baby contest. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study design. SETTING: Urban Health Centre, Pune. PARTICIPANTS: Of the 998 children attending twelve anganwadis, who were screened preliminarily, 32 were chosen for the healthy baby contest. The contest was assessed using a specified scoring system in which due weightage was given to personal hygiene, growth, development, immunisation status and mother's knowledge about nutrition and vaccination. RESULTS: There was a significant intraobserver correlation (rs = 0.85, p < 0.05) and intraobserver correlation (rs = 0.92, p < 0.05). The scores were age independent. CONCLUSIONS: The criteria chosen were objective in nature. The objectivity of the criteria can make the assessment of the participants more unbiased, quick and easy. The results of the contests can be explained more easily and are more readily accepted. Thus, the healthy baby contests can be made more successful.

Suppression of the inflammatory response to cardiopulmonary bypass.

The inflammatory response to major surgery, especially cardiac surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) is now a well established entity. A whole body inflammatory response can lead to severe organ dysfunction, postoperative bleeding disorders, respiratory distress syndrome and sometimes death. There is, however, controversy over various methods and their efficacy towards suppression of this response. We studied forty consecutive patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) using CPB. Ten patients in group A served as control while ten patients in group B received piroxicam, a non steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). Ten patients in group C received aprotinin, a kallikrein inhibitor and ten patients in group D underwent haemofiltration during CPB. Inflammatory response by way of increase in total white blood cell (WBC) count (p<0.007), decrease in lymphocyte count (p<0.005), increase in C-reactive protein (CRP, p <0.005) was observed in all four groups at 24 hour after CPB. A decrease in complement C3 and C4 (p<0.01) was observed in groups A and C at 24 hours after CPB. The response observed was not severe enough to cause any organ damage in any group. None of the methods studied could effectively suppress the inflammatory response to CPB but the response was altered in some way by each method.

Primary fallopian tube carcinoma.

Although Fallopian tubes are frequently involved in benign gynaecological conditions, primary malignant involvement is rare, and because of its rarity, lack of diagnostic accuracy, nonpresenting symptoms and physical findings, primary fallopian tube carcinoma is seldom diagnosed before laparotomy. We are reporting one such rare case.