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Competing Interests: None

This document aims to assist oncologists in making clinical decisions encountered while managing their patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), specific to Indian practice, based on consensus among experts. Most patients are staged by Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) staging system which comprises patient performance status, Child-Pugh status, number and size of nodules, portal vein invasion and metastasis. Patients should receive multidisciplinary care. Surgical resection and transplant forms the mainstay of curative treatment. Ablative techniques are used for small tumours (<3 cm) in patients who are not candidates for surgical resection (Child B and C). Patients with advanced (HCC should be assessed on an individual basis to determine whether targeted therapy, interventional radiology procedures or best supportive care should be provided. In advanced HCC, immunotherapy, newer targeted therapies and modern radiation therapy have shown promising results. Patients should be offered regular surveillance after completion of curative resection or treatment of advanced disease., Competing Interests: None

Background & Objectives: Cancer cervix is one of the most common forms of genital malignancy among Indian women. Recurrence is seen in a significant number of cases. The conventional cervical smear technique has inherent problems and screening and interpretation errors. This study was undertaken to assess the efficacy of liquid-based cytology (LBC) as a method for cytological follow up and detection of recurrence in treated cases of cancer cervix and to compare it with conventional Pap smear technique to find the best screening method for detection of recurrence in these patients., Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted over a period of one year. Patients attending Gynecology and Radiotherapy outpatient departments for follow up after treatment of cancer cervix were included. Pap smear and LBC were taken in all cases. Colposcopy and biopsy were done for those having epithelial cell abnormality in cytology report. Colposcopy and biopsy were taken as gold standard for diagnosis of cancer cervix recurrence., Results: Ninety four treated patients of carcinoma cervix were studied. The diagnostic accuracy for detection of recurrence of conventional Pap smear was 79.16 per cent, and that of LBC was 97.6 per cent. The difference between the two methods was significant (P<0.001)., Interpretation & Conclusions: Our findings showed that LBC performed better than the conventional method of cytology to detect recurrence of squamous cell carcinoma. Its sensitivity, specificity as well as accuracy were much higher than conventional method. LBC can be a better method of cytological follow up of post-treated patients of cancer cervix., Competing Interests: None

A study was undertaken to determine the adverse foetal outcome in antichlamydial IgM positive asymptomatic pregnant females. An indirect immunoperoxidase assay was done to detect IgM in 78 apparently normal asymptomatic pregnant women during the third trimester and follow up was done till delivery to study the effect of chlamydial infection on foetal outcome. A total of 28 (35.9%) women were positive for antichlamydial IgM while only 3.33 per cent asymptomatic non-pregnant normal women (controls) were positive. 28.7 per cent IgM positive mothers delivered low birth weight (LBW) babies (P less than 0.05), 9.7 per cent had premature labour (PTL) and 4.7 per cent had intrauterine death (IUD). The findings are significant as none of the IgM negative mothers had PTL and IUD and only 2.6 per cent had LBW babies.

Antibiotic susceptibility testing against 17 antibiotics was done on 96 strains of various species of coagulase negative staphylococci by Stokes method. Hundred per cent sensitivity was found against vancomycin and cefotaxime and about 90 per cent against ciprofloxacin, clavulanate potentiated amoxycillin, cloxacillin and clindamycin. Strains showed highest resistance against cotrimoxazole (77.08%) and tetracycline (64.59%). Clavulanate potentiated amoxycillin was found to be highly active against penicillin, ampicillin and amoxycillin resistant organisms. The results highlight the importance of antibiotic resistance typing among coagulase negative staphylococci species which are increasingly being reported from serious clinical infections making empiric therapy and selection of antibiotics difficult in these infections.