Context:
The risk of cerebral venous thrombosis at particular locations and its association with high altitude is yet to be established completely. The relation between high altitude and venous thromboembolic events has been debated for many years. Cerebral venous thrombosis presenting with nonspecific symptoms like headache can be a tough challenge for primary care physicians deployed at high altitudes.
Materials and Methods:
Combatants going to wide areas of mountainous territories at varying altitudes presenting with persistent severe headache associated with nausea and vomiting were subjected into the study after evaluation at zonal and tertiary care hospital.
Results:
Over a period of 18 months from October 2018 to March 2020, 75 cases of headache were screened and evaluated. Eighteen of these patients were diagnosed to have cerebral venous thrombosis.
Conclusion:
The occurrence of chronic venous thrombosis in combatants who enter and remain at high altitude for the prolonged duration is very common and the gold standard for diagnosis is a clinical evaluation with radio imaging.
Context:
Ulcerative colitis (UC) initially thought to be a disease of developed world is equally common in India. Surprisingly, there are very scant data from India. The study was undertaken to find the frequency of relapse and to determine factors predictor of relapse in Indian population.
Subjects and Methods:
This study was conducted at a tertiary care center of New Delhi for a period of 1 year. Patients were included if they had a diagnosis of UC based on accepted historical, endoscopic, histological, and/or radiologic criteria. Detailed past/present history, baseline clinical examination, dietary details, and psychological analysis using shortened Depression Anxiety Stress Scale score, biochemical tests, inflammatory markers, endoscopic, and histopathological analysis were done at baseline and regular intervals. The outcome was clinical relapse or continued remission.
Results:
Out of 86 patients screened, 50 patients were included in the study according to inclusion criteria and were followed up. The frequency of relapse was 32%. Univariate analysis showed higher relapse frequency, frequency of steroid received in past, patients on immunomodulator therapy, presence of acute or chronic inflammatory cells on histology, and disease activity at baseline as predictors of relapse. There was no significant difference between anxiety, stress, and depression relapsers and those who maintained remission. On multivariate analysis, disease activity at baseline was the only independent predictor of relapse.
Conclusions:
Stringent control of disease activity with mucosal healing should be the aim, as mucosal healing is the only predictor for prolonged remission.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.