Diabetes has been recognized as a “global health emergency” with an estimated 9% of adults being affected. However, about half of these adults remain undiagnosed. Conventional screening tools like fasting plasma glucose (FPG), oral glucose tolerance testing (OGTT) and glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) can be inconvenient and expensive in a community-based setting. The Indian Diabetes Risk Score (IDRS) is a simple, non-invasive tool which has been validated for use in the Indian population. Age, abdominal obesity, family history of diabetes and physical activity levels have been weighted for a maximum score of 100. Persons with IDRS of <30 are categorized as low risk, 30-50 as medium risk and those with > 60 as high risk for diabetes. A community based, cross-sectional, analytical study was planned to assess the performance of IDRS among adults in a semi-urban area in Kathmandu, Nepal. A total of 256 (170 female, 86 male) persons without diabetes from 260 households were screened during the study period. A majority (46.09%) were classified as high risk, 44.53% as moderate risk and 9.38% as low risk for developing diabetes. Among them, 162 (63.28%) volunteered for definitive testing. The prevalence of undiagnosed diabetes and prediabetes was 4.32% (95% CI: 1.75% to 8.70%) and 7.14% (95% CI: 3.89% to 12.58%) respectively. IDRS predicted the combined risk of diabetes and prediabetes with sensitivity of 84.21% and specificity of 55.24% in adults with score of 60 and above. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) of IDRS for identifying diabetes and prediabetes was 0.69 as compared to the gold standard (2hour Plasma Glucose) AUC of 0.98. IDRS may be a suitable screening tool for diabetes and prediabetes in the adult Nepalese study population.

Pleural effusion is present when there is >15ml of fluid is accumulated in the pleural space. It can be divided into two types; exudative and transudative pleural effusion. Tuberculosis and parapneumonic effusion are the common cause of exudative pleural effusion whereas heart failure accounts for most of the cases of transudative pleural effusion. This study was a hospital based cross sectional study performed at Nepal Medical College during the period of January 2016-December 2016. A total of 50 patients who fulfilled the inclusion criteria were enrolled. Pleural effusion was confirmed by clinical examination and radiology. After confirmation of pleural effusion, pleural fluid was aspirated and was analysed for protein, LDH, cholesterol. The Heffner criteria was compared with Light criteria to classify exudative or transudative pleural effusion. Among 50 patients, 30 were male and 20 were female. The mean age of patient was 45.4±21.85 years. The sensitivity and specificity of using Light criteria to detect the two type of pleural effusion was 100% and 90.9%, whereas using Heffner criteria was 94.87%, 100% respectively(P<0.01). There are variety of causes for development of pleural effusion and no one criteria is definite to differentiate between exudative or transudative effusion. In this study Light criteria was more sensitive whereas Heffner criteria was more specific to classify exudative pleural effusion. Hence a combination of criteria might be useful in case where there is difficulty to identify the cause of pleural effusion.

Various scoring system have been developed and are becoming essential part of Pediatric and other critical care units. The Pediatric department wants to introduce Pediatric Index of Mortality-2 (PIM 2) as a predictive scoring system in Pediatric critical care unit of Nepal Medical College Teaching Hospital (NMCTH). This was a prospective cohort study done in Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) of NMCTH. Study was done from August 2017 to December 2018. All cases admitted in ICU were taken consecutively from term newborn to 14 yrs of age. PIM 2 scoring system was done in all patients. PIM 2 performed well in terms of discrimination with area under curve for PIM 2 scor e was 0.809 with 95% Confidence Interval of 0.0709 to 0.910 and Standard Error of 0.051. Good calibration was observed across deciles of risk as measured by Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness of fit test with P value of 0.163, chi-square value of 11.752 (8). Mortality observed in our PICU was 28.4% with standardized mortality ratio of 1. PIM 2 scoring system performed well in our PICU.