This study examined the effects of treatment of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) on the health-related quality of life (physical/functional, mental, social and global aspect), pain and prostatic symptoms.
There is very little information in literature describing ethnic variations in etiologic and clinical outcome of acute pancreatitis in the Asian population. This study describes the demographic, etiologic and clinical course of acute pancreatitis among the three main races in Malaysia namely, the Malays, Chinese and Indians. One hundred and thirty-three consecutive patients were admitted for acute pancreatitis for the period January 1994 to July 1999 and they consisted of 77 males and 56 females with a mean age of 43.5 years (SD+/- 14.7). The racial breakdown of acute pancreatitis was: Malays 38 (28.6%), Chinese 19 (14.3%), Indians 75 (56.4%) and 1 (0.8%) patient was an orang asli. The incidence of alcohol association with acute pancreatitis was significantly increased in the males, while gallstone pancreatitis was principally a disease of the female. Alcohol was identified as the predominant factor associated with acute pancreatitis among the Indians (73.3%) and in contrast, gallstone was the commonest associated etiologic factor for the Malays and Chinese. No etiologic factor could be identified in a substantial proportion of the Malay patients (60.5%) when compared to the Chinese (36.8%) and Indians (35%). Severe disease developed in 25% of the cases reviewed but there was no difference in of the rate of severe pancreatitis in terms of ethnic groupings or etiologic factors. The overall mortality rate was 7.5% and the commonest cause of death was multi-organ failure. The study recognises that there are differences in the characteristics of acute pancreatitis among the three major races in the country and this divergence is primarily due to sociocultural habits.
Tuberculous paraplegia in pregnancy is reported to be rare. Paraplegia due to tuberculosis has a good prognosis if surgical decompression and stabilisation are done early together with chemotherapy. Vaginal delivery is not contraindicated in pregnancy complicated by paraplegia, but is associated with problems related to the initiation and progression of labour. Performing spinal nursing on an unstable spine with a rapidly enlarging gravid uterus in the third trimester of pregnancy poses a significant challenge. We report successful simultaneous Caesarean section and surgical treatment of a paraplegic spine due to tuberculosis.
Fracture neck of the femur is rare in children and occurs following severe trauma. Several recommendations have been made for the treatment of displaced transcervical fracture type 11 (Delbet classification). However there are no recommendations when such a fracture occurs after recent acute osteomyelits of the neck of the femur. The management of a case is described with the outcome after 36 months.
Thirty patients with early onset breast cancer or familial breast cancer from Malaysia were analysed for germline mutation in the early onset breast cancer I gene (BRCA1). Direct sequencing of the entire coding region of BRCA1 identified a frameshift mutation, c.5447-5448insC (insC5447) (codon 1776 of exon 21) in a patient aged 32 of the Malay ethnic origin, who had no family history of breast and/or ovarian cancer. Eight polymorphisms (2201C > T, 2430T > C, P871L, E1038G, K1183R, 4427T > C, S1613G and IVS8-57delT) were identified in the samples tested.
We reviewed the 52 new cases of pulmonary tuberculosis diagnosed at Pusat Pakar Utara, Kedah in 1998. It was found that the majority of the patients had symptoms for many years. They had seen many doctors but were not diagnosed. In 40% of the patients, no investigations for tuberculosis were done and in the others tuberculosis was excluded because of negative sputum smear examination. Many had typical history and X-ray changes suggestive of tuberculosis but more sensitive investigations such as sputum culture for Mycobacterium or bronchoscopy were not performed. Cases are presented to illustrate the problems in the diagnosis.
The concordance between endoscopic and histological gastritis was determined in 52 patients referred for upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. The study was conducted in Northeastern Peninsular Malaysia, an area with a low background prevalence of H. pylori infection. Endoscopic and histological gastritis were assessed in accordance with the Sydney System. The results showed poor concordance between endoscopic and histological gastritis even after reclassifying mild endoscopic gastritis as normal. The low prevalence of H. pylori was validated in this study.
We have studied residual limb length inequality following femoral shaft fractures in 62 children. From 61.2% of the children who had shortening of more than 1 cm at union, 34.21% still maintained the shortening at the completion of study. The longitudinal femoral overgrowth occurred significantly during the first 18 months of the fracture in 77.4% of the children, with an average of 1.17 cm. Children with proximal-third fractures and those who sustained the fractures before eight years of age have higher capability to correct the limb length disparity.
Ethnic differences exist in patients with diabetes mellitus. Not much is known about such differences in Asian populations. The aim of the study was to determine ethnic differences among Chinese, Malay and Indian patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus in Singapore.
Diffusely-infiltrating mucinous adenocarcinoma of the renal pelvis associated with lithiasis and chronic gout is reported in a 61-year-old Malay man. The patient underwent left nephrectomy and vesiculo-lithotomy. This tumour is postulated to arise in response to chronic irritation of the urothelium.
Immediate recognition of anastomotic failure is important to ensure the viability of the vascularised fibular graft. The problems associated with post-operative bone scanning and angiography for immediate detection of anastomotic failure have been described.
In childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), cytogenetics play an important role in diagnosis, allocation of treatment and prognosis. Conventional cytogenetic analysis, involving mainly karyotyping in our experience, has not been successful in a large proportion of cases due to inadequate metaphase spreads and poor chromosome morphology. Our aim is to develop a highly sensitive and specific method to screen simultaneously for the four most frequent fusion transcripts resulting from specific chromosomal translocations, namely, both the CML- and ALLtype BCR-ABL transcripts of t(9;22), E2A-PBX1 transcript of t(1;19), the MLL-AF4 transcript of t(4;11) and TEL-AML1 (also termed ETV6-CBFA2) of the cryptic t(12;21). A multiplex reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction protocol (RT-PCR) was developed and tested out on archival bone marrow samples and leukaemia cell lines. In all samples with a known translocation detected by cytogenetic techniques, the same translocation was identified by the multiplex-PCR assay. Multiplex RT-PCR assay is an effective, sensitive, accurate and cost-effective diagnostic tool which can improve our ability to accurately and rapidly risk-stratify patients with childhood ALL.
This paper reports a second outbreak of acute haemorrhagic conjunctivitis due to coxsackievirus A24 in peninsular Malaysia. Between June 2002 and early October 2003, 10,327 patients, comprising 3,261 children and 7,066 adults, were treated for acute conjunctivitis in 11 government health clinics in the Melaka Tengah district of the state of Melaka. The figure grossly underestimates the size of the outbreak; as no patients treated in private clinics in the same district were included. Institution and household surveillance showed that the commonest presenting clinical feature of the illness was eye-discharge (91.2%), followed by foreign body sensation (81.8%), pain (78.3%) and subconjunctival haemorrhage (74.4%). The mean duration of illness was 6.5 and five days for patients with and without subconjunctival haemorrhage respectively.
To study the clinical and demographic aspects as well as the outcomes of severe cases of malaria infections managed in the intensive care unit of the Sarawak General Hospital, Kuching from January 1996 to December 2001.
We determined the prevalence of hypertension and the level of awareness, treatment and control of hypertension among Malaysian adults in a population based cross-sectional survey. Twenty-one thousand and three hundred ninety-one adults aged 30 or older in all 13 states of Malaysia in 1996 were sampled using a stratified two-stage cluster sampling design. Thirty-three percent of adults had hypertension with a higher percentage among women. Among hypertensives, 33% were aware of their hypertension, 23% were currently on treatment and a mere 6% had controlled hypertension. There was practically no difference in mean BP between treated and untreated hypertensives. Concerted public health effort is urgently required to improve the detection, treatment and control of hypertension in Malaysia.
Study name: National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS-1996)
Thirteen patients had skeletal reconstruction using vascularised fibula graft following resection of the diseased bone. Eleven patients had reconstruction of the lower limbs and two patients of the upper limbs. Clinical and radiographical evidence union were achieved with the average time of 32 weeks (earliest eight weeks). Six out of 11 patients (54%) in lower limb reconstruction started weight bearing at the average of 27 weeks. Bony union in this study is comparable with other studies using vascularised fibula graft.
Opium addicts (OA) with no biliary symptoms have been shown to have dilated common bile duct (CBD). Endoscopic retrograde cholangio-pancreatography (ERCP) without biliary drainage in such asymptomatic OA is hazardous. Hence it is not indicated unless there are clear clinical and laboratory evidences of biliary stasis.