Expectations and Experience of Children with Unilateral Cochlear Implantation: A Parental Perspective.

To find out parental expectations regarding outcomes of unilateral cochlear implantation prior to surgery and experience received by them after cochlear implantation and 1 year of regular auditory verbal therapy, with respect to the communication abilities, social skills and participation. Total of 200 parents of hearing impaired children participated in the study. A closed ended questionnaire containing 13 questions were used to collect the data. The participants were instructed to complete all the questions provided based on their expectations and experiences. The descriptive statistics were used to determine the frequency and percentage. Among 200 parents, almost all (95%) of the parents expected to have improvement in all the subscale of communication abilities, social skills and participation. 68.5% of the parents experienced improvement in their child's communication abilities, such as, response to quiet sounds, repetition of words without seeing speaker's face, elimination of use of gestures, easy communication and verbal expression for needs, thoughts and feelings. 76% of the parents experienced improvement in social skills and participations, such as, good relationship with elders, siblings and peers, making friends outside the family, actively participating in the activity done by other children and easily accepted by peers in the classroom. A large number of parents met with their expectations and a small proportion of families were found to be disappointed due to high hopes and unrealistic expectation before implantation, which had adverse effect on the children's performance.

Psychometric Features of Dizziness Handicap Inventory (DHI): Development and Standardization in Gujarati Language.

OBJECTIVE: Dizziness is a sensation of spatial disorientation of rotating or non-rotating in nature, mostly due to Oto-neurological insults. A symptom-specific dizziness handicap inventory may aid in understanding the severity of the condition and its impact on the quality of life. Therefore, the Dizziness Handicap Inventory-English version (DHI-E) was used as the most reliable subjective tool to assess the effect of dizziness in various aspects of life and so was translated into several languages. Hence, the present study aimed at developing and standardizing the self-administering Dizziness Handicap Inventory - Gujarati version (DHI-G). METHODS: A cross-sectional survey design was performed. 50 participants, i.e. 18 males and 32 females aged between 15 to 55 years with complaints of vertigo/dizziness were recruited for the study. The questionnaire was re-administered to thirty of the total participants after 10 days of initial administration for examining test-retest reliability. RESULTS: DHI-G achieved an overall alpha score of 0.92 suggesting good internal consistency and the score of 0.84, 0.82 and 0.81 on three subscales i.e. physical, functional and emotional respectively. Intra class correlation (ICC) revealed good test-retest reliability with a score of 0.81. CONCLUSION: DHI-G can be used as a reliable and valid tool in the clinical and research setting extensively.

Novel methods for the quantification of changes in actin organization in chondrocytes using fluorescent imaging and linear profiling.

We present three novel reproducible methodologies for the quantification of changes in actin organization from microscope images. Striation and integrative analysis were devised for the investigation of trans-cellular filaments and F-actin localization, respectively, in response to physiological or mechanical actin-modulatory conditions. Additionally, the Parker-Qusous (PQ) formula was developed as a measure of total quantity of F-actin, independent of cell volume changes, whereby fluorescence intensity was divided by the cube root of cell volume, squared. Values obtained were quantified in Mauricean Units (Mu; pixel/µm(3)). Upon isolation, there was a 49% decrease in total F-actin fluorescence from 1.91 ± 0.16 pixel/µm(3) (Mu) to 0.95 ± 0.55 Mu, whereas upon culture, an apparent increase in total fluorescence was deemed insignificant due to an increase in average cell volume, with a rise, however, in striation units (StU) from 1 ± 1 to 5 ± 1 StU/cell, and a decrease in percentage cortical fluorescence to 30.45% ± 1.52% (P = 7.8 × 10(-5)). Freshly isolated chondrocytes exhibited a decrease in total F-actin fluorescence to 0.61 ± 0.05 Mu and 0.32 ± 0.02 Mu, 10 min posthypertonic and hypotonic challenges, respectively. Regulatory volume decrease was inhibited in the presence of REV5901 with maintenance of actin levels at 1.15 Mu. Following mechanical impact in situ, there was a reduction in total F-actin fluorescence to 0.95 ± 0.08 Mu and 0.74 ± 0.06 Mu under isotonic and hypotonic conditions, respectively, but not under hypertonic conditions. We report simple methodologies for quantification of changes in actin organization, which will further our understanding of the role of actin in various cellular stress responses. These techniques can be applied to better quantify changes in localization of various proteins using fluorescent labeling.