Search

Background and Objectives: Air pollution due to road traffic is a serious health hazard and air quality crisis in cities is mainly due to vehicular emission. Thus the persons who are continuously exposed are at an increased risk. The study was carried out to evaluate the extent of impairment in lung function in traffic police personnel compared to matched unexposed control group., Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted to measure the spirometric parameters of 100 traffic police personnel, aged 20-55 years, working in Saurashtra region, as compared to matched control group, consisting of 100 unexposed males. Measurement of lung volumes and capacities was done with SPIROEXCEL. The statistical analysis was carried out with Graph pad instat 3., Results: Traffic police personnel had significantly declined forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV 1), slow vital capacity (SVC) and maximum voluntary ventilation (MVV) when compared with predictive normal values, which is probably due to exposure to vehicular exhaust. Comparison of test values between groups showed significantly reduced FVC, MVV and increased FEV1/FVC ratio and insignificantly declined FEV1 and SVC in cases as compared to controls. Traffic personnel with longer duration of exposure showed significantly reduced lung functions than those with shorter duration. Smokers showed lower test values as compared to non-smokers with significance only in unexposed group., Conclusion: The effect of pollution by vehicular exhausts may be responsible for these pulmonary function impairments and traffic police personnel should be offered personal protective or preventive measures.

Background: Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is an aftermath of type 2 diabetes posing a significant health problem in developing countries. Its silent progression warrants presymptomatic screening by ankle brachial index (ABI), which cannot be applied to the whole population. We tried to measure the burden of PAD in diabetics of this region correlating various risk factors for it quantitatively and qualitatively., Materials and Methods: From various out-patient departments, 110 known under treatment type 2 diabetics were recruited. They underwent thorough assessment for general, symptomatic, medical history and risk factor screening that included 11 well-known risk factors. ABI was measured by Versadop instrument using the standard protocol with ABI <0.9 being considered as abnormal., Results: There was a high prevalence of asymptomatism, hypertension, positive family history and age <52 years in the study group. Relative risk was highest for asymptomatism followed by high body mass index, hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular disease and smoking, but less significant for age, gender, fasting sugar level, family history. More adverse ABI profile was noticed with the increase in number of five modifiable risk factors cumulatively., Conclusion: There was a high prevalence of low ABI in our region that is an evidence of PAD mainly affected by risk factors many of which were modifiable. Defining those who are at risk to develop PAD in Diabetes, one can use ABI better in early screening and prompt treatment of this complication to stop its further progression and primary prevention can be served as felt the need for health-care effectively.