BACKGROUND:
Prostate cancer often co-exists with other diseases. It accounts for 11% of all cancers in Nigerian men, and it is the commonest cause of mortality due to cancer in elderly males in Nigeria.
OBJECTIVE:
To present co-morbid medical conditions and medical complications of prostate cancer in patients with the disease in Southern Nigeria.
PATIENTS AND METHODS:
The study was carried out prospectively (2002 to 2003) at University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH), and Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital (NAUTH) Nnewi- both in Southern Nigeria. Using common proforma, patients who presented to the urology units of the two teaching hospitals were evaluated clinically and with relevant investigations for prostate cancer and other diseases. Those with histologically confirmed prostate cancer were included in this study. Data was also collected retrospectively by using the same proforma to obtain information from case files of 37 patients diagnosed with prostate cancer at UPTH. Data from the two institutions were collated and analysed.
RESULTS:
Of 189 cases analysed, 73.4% had significant medical co-morbid diseases/complications. These included anaemia (69.8%), urinary tract infection (56.1%), chronic renal failure (33.9%), hypertension (41.8%), diabetes mellitus (9.5%), paraplegia (9.5%), congestive cardiac failure (9.0%) and cerebrovascular disease (5.3%).
CONCLUSION/RECOMMENDATIONS:
These patients had high disease burden. Improved health education and well coordinated interdisciplinary team work are suggested in managing this malignancy.
AIM: The aim of this study was to evaluate urine microscopy, dipstick analysis and urinary symptoms in screening for urinary tract infection (UTI) in hyperemesis gravidarum (HG).
MATERIALS AND METHODS: A prospective cross-sectional study was performed on women at first hospitalization for HG. A clean-catch mid-stream urine sample from each recruit was sent for microscopy (for bacteria, leucocytes and erythrocytes), dipstick analysis (for leukocyte esterase, nitrites, protein and hemoglobin) and microbiological culture. The presence of current urinary symptoms was elicited by questionnaire. UTI is defined as at least 10(5) colony-forming units/mL of a single uropathogen on culture. Screening test parameters were analyzed against UTI.
RESULTS: UTI was diagnosed in 15/292 subjects (5.1%). Receiver-operator characteristic curve analysis of microscopic urine leucocytes revealed area under the curve=0.64, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.5-0.79, P=0.063 and erythrocytes area under the curve=0.53, 95%CI 0.39-0.67, P=0.67 for UTI indicating the limited screening utility of these parameters. Microscopic bacteriuria (likelihood ratio [LR] 1.1, 95%CI 0.7-1.5) and urine dipstick leukocyte esterase (LR 1.4, 95%CI 1.1-1.8), nitrites (LR 2.3, 95%CI 0.3-17.2), protein (LR 1.0, 95%CI 0.7-1.6) and hemoglobin (LR 0.8, 95%CI 0.4-1.5) were not useful screening tests for UTI in HG. Elicited symptoms were also not predictive of UTI.
CONCLUSION: Urine microscopy, dipstick analysis and urinary symptoms were not useful in screening for UTI in HG. UTI should be established by urine culture in HG before starting antibiotic treatment.