Anti-Glomerular Basement Membrane Disease in a 10-year-old Child: A Case Report.

Anti-glomerular basement membrane disease is an extremely uncommon entity in children. It has an incidence of 0.5 to 1 per million per year in adults and is even more uncommon in children. It occurs due to autoantibody against glomerular basement membrane collagen and is characterized by rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis with or without pulmonary hemorrhage. As the literature on anti-glomerular basement membrane disease is limited from our part of the world, it is important to consider it as the rare cause of rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis as early intervention improves prognosis. We report a case of a 10-year-old male who initially presented with glomerulonephritis and later was diagnosed with anti-glomerular basement membrane disease. Keywords: basement membrane; case reports; glomerulonephritis; kidney.

Point prevalence of healthcare-associated infections and antibiotic use in a tertiary care teaching hospital in Nepal: A cross-sectional study.

Information on the burden of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and patterns of antibiotic use are prerequisites for infection prevention and control (IPC) and antibiotics stewardship programmes. However, a few studies have been reported from resource-limited settings and many of them have not used standard definitions to diagnose HAI precluding benchmarking with regional or international data. This study aims to estimate the prevalence of HAIs and antibiotic use in our centre. We conducted a point prevalence survey in a 350-bed university hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal in April 2019. We reviewed all patients aged ⩾ 18 years admitted to the hospital for at least two calendar days and evaluated for the three common HAIs-pneumonia, urinary tract infection and surgical site infection. We used the clinical criteria by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control to diagnose the HAIs. We also collected information on the antibiotics used. Of 160 eligible patients, 18 (11.25%) had HAIs and 114 (87.5%) were on antibiotics, with more than half of them (61/114 patients, 53.5%) receiving two or more antibiotics. This highlights the need for effective implementation of IPC as well as antibiotics stewardship programmes in our centre.

Epidemiology and Risk Factors of Healthcare-Associated Infections in Critically Ill Patients in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital in Nepal: A Prospective Cohort Study.

BACKGROUND: Healthcare-associated infection (HAI) is an important public health problem, particularly in intensive care units (ICUs). We aimed to examine the epidemiology and risk factors of HAIs in our ICUs and study their microbiological profile. METHODS: We evaluated 100 consecutive patients in 3 medical and surgical ICUs of a tertiary care teaching hospital daily starting in January 2016 using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention definitions and methods. We determined the incidence and sites of HAIs, identified the causative microorganism, and studied their antibiotic sensitivity profiles. We investigated risk factors for the development of an HAI using a multiple logistic regression model. RESULTS: Of 300 patients, 129 patients (43%) developed HAIs (55.96 HAI events per 1000 ICU-days). Pneumonia was the most common type of HAI (57, 41%). Escherichia coli was the most frequently isolated microorganism (20, 29%) and 74% of the pathogens isolated were multi-drug resistant. The presence of an invasive device (Odds Ratio, 4.29; 95% Confidence Interval, 2.52-7.51) and use of sedation (Odds Ratio, 2.24; 95% Confidence Interval, 1.31-3.87) were the statistically significant risk factors for HAIs. CONCLUSIONS: We found a high incidence of HAIs in our ICUs and a high burden of multidrug-resistant microorganisms highlighting the importance of infection control and antibiotic stewardship.

Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices on Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Infection Control in Nepal: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) transmission is an important problem, particularly in low-income settings. This study is aimed at assessing the knowledge, attitude, and practices of DR-TB infection control among the healthcare workers under the National Tuberculosis Control Program in Nepal. In this cross-sectional study, we studied the healthcare workers from all the 11 functioning DR-TB treatment centers across Nepal in March 2018. Through face-to-face interviews, trained data collectors collected data on the characteristics of healthcare workers, their self-reported knowledge, attitude, and practice on DR-TB infection control. We entered the data in Microsoft Excel and analyzed in the R statistical software. We assigned a score of one to the correct response and zero to the incorrect or no response and calculated a composite score in each of the knowledge, attitude, and practice domains. We ascertained the healthcare workers as having good knowledge, appropriate attitude, and optimal practices when the composite score was ≥50%. We summarized the numerical variables with median (interquartile range (IQR)) and the categorical variables with proportions. We ran appropriate correlation tests to identify relationships between knowledge, attitude, and practice scores. We regarded a p value of <0.05 as significant. A total of 95 out of 102 healthcare workers responded. There were 46 male respondents. The median age was 33 years (IQR 26-42). Most of them (53, 55.79%) were midlevel paramedics. We found 91 (95.79%) respondents had good knowledge, 49 (51.58%) had an appropriate attitude, and 35 (36.84%) had optimal practices on DR-TB infection control. We found a statistically significant positive correlation between attitude and practice scores (ρ = 0.37, p ≤ 0.001). The healthcare workers at the DR-TB treatment centers in Nepal have good knowledge of DR-TB infection control, but it did not translate into an appropriate attitude or optimal practices.

Prevalence and risk factors of depression in patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis in Nepal: A cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR TB) have a protracted course of illness and the available treatment has a low success rate. These factors combined with the associated stigma and financial implications put the patients with DR TB at an increased risk of depression. The psychiatric side effects of anti-tuberculosis drugs further aggravate the problem. This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of depression among patients with DR TB in Nepal and identify risk factors. METHODS: We conducted this cross-sectional study in April 2018 at all the functioning 11 programmatic DR TB treatment centers across Nepal. We selected 129 patients aged ≥ 16 years receiving treatment for DR TB by non-probability quota sampling. Six trained data collectors conducted face-to-face interviews and administered the Nepali language version of Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9) to screen for depression. We summarized sociodemographic and treatment characteristics with median (Interquartile Range [IQR]) and proportions as appropriate. We performed univariate analysis for the variables hypothesized as risk factors for depression. We fitted a multivariable binary logistic regression model with depression as the outcome variable and the variables with a significance level of < 0.25 as explanatory variables. We regarded a p-value of < 0.05 as significant for individual variables in the logistic regression model. RESULTS: Of the 129 patients studied, 92 (71.3%) were male and the median age was 36 years (IQR 25-48). The majority (109, 84.4%) had multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB). We identified 81 patients (62.7%, 95% Confidence Interval [CI] 53.7-71) with the PHQ-9 score of 10 or more signifying probable depressive disorder. In univariate analyses, age, treatment center location, DR TB treatment duration, and duration of current illness had a p-value lower than the pre-specified cut-off of 0.25. In the multivariable logistic regression model, we found a statistically significant association of depression with the duration of illness (adjusted Odds Ratio 1.15, 95% CI 1.07-1.26, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: This study has found that a large proportion of the patients with DR TB screened have depression suggesting the need for screening and management of comorbid depression within the National TB Control Program.