Differential dose absorptions for various biological tissue equivalent materials using Gafchromic XR-QA2 film in diagnostic radiology.

Phantoms are devices that simulate human tissues including soft tissues, lungs, and bones in medical and health physics. The purpose of this work was to investigate the differential dose absorption in several commercially available low-cost materials as substitutes to human tissues using Gafchromic XR-QA2 film. The measurement of absorbed dose by different materials of various densities was made using the film to establish the relationship between the absorbed dose and the material density. Materials investigated included soft board materials, Perspex, chicken bone, Jeltrate, chalk, cow bone, marble, and aluminum, which have varying densities from 0.26 to 2.67gcm-3. The absorbed dose increased as the density and atomic number of the material increased. The absorbed dose to the density can be well represented by a polynomial function for the materials used.

Chronic tibial osteomyelitis in children. A case review at hospital tengku ampuan afzan, kuantan.

Osteomyelitis in children has various clinical manifestations causing diagnostic and therapeutic difficulties. Inappropriate treatment of acute osteomyelitis may lead to chronic, serious and complicated condition. Chronic osteomyelitis continues to be a major cause of morbidity and disability in children living in developing countries. We present three cases of tibial osteomyelitis that have different presentations and sequalae. Our intention is to alert our colleagues, particularly primary physicians, regarding the variety of presentation and the important of early diagnosis and treatment to reduce the risk of morbidity following osteomyelitis.

Major limb amputations in Seremban Hospital: a review of 204 cases from 1997-1999.

We conducted a retrospective study of 3 years duration beginning from the 1st January 1997 to the 31st December 1999 in order to identify the epidemiology of major limb amputations in Seremban Hospital. Two hundred and four patients were included in this study out of which 65.7% were male and 34.3% were female. The mean age of the amputees was 39.7 years old. Non traumatic amputations constitute 85.8% of the cases mainly due to diabetic ulcers or gangrene (91%) followed by peripheral vascular disease (7%) and malignancy (2%). Traumatic amputations represent 14.2% of the cases with road-traffic accident as the major cause (82.8%) followed by industrial accident (17.2%). Lower limb amputations were performed in 97.5% of the cases with below knee amputations as the commonest procedure (72%), followed by above knee amputations (27%) and Syme amputations (1%). Five patients had upper limb amputations done. Four of them were below elbow amputations while one had forequarter amputation done of the left shoulder. Of note, there were increasing number of amputations done over the last three years with alarming increasing trends of traumatic amputation. The three main risk factors for major limb amputations are diabetes mellitus, male gender and road traffic accident.