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Background Surgical site wound infection is one of the serious concern in developing countries. Multiple studies have been done to find out the most commonly infecting bacteria and the susceptibility pattern, as it varies geographically, the type of surgery performed, the surgeon's hand and hospital to hospital based on the status of sterilization. Current study aimed to find out the frequency and susceptibility pattern of microorganisms found in surgical site infection. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted at the surgical department of Abbasi Shaheed hospital Karachi. The infected organism was identified by using culture test after that slide agglutination method was used to confirm it. Kirby Bauer disc diffusion technique was used to assess antibiotic sensitivity. The sensitivity of antibiotics tested were ampicillin, amoxicillin, augmentin, ceftriaxone, cefotaxime, ceftazidime, cefixime, cefepime, cefuroxime, amikacin, gentamycin, ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, piperacillin in combination with tazobactam, meropenem and vancomycin. The results were analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Science version 20. Results: The mean age of the study participants was 29.42 ± 9.2 years. Among all surgeries the infection rate was 13.9% while majority of cases were infected with E. coli (58.9%) after that staphylococcus aureus (14.7%) was found on second number. Antibiotic susceptibility pattern showed that the meropenem and piprecillin in combination with tazobactam were highly sensitive against E. coli and S. aureus with sensitivity of 97%, 94.1% and 89.2%, 75% respectively while vancomycin was highly sensitive against streptococci and S. aureus with sensitivity of 100% and 87.5% respectively. Conclusion: It can be concluded that postoperative wound infection is very common cause of morbidity in developing countries and E. coli was the most commonly involved organism. Antibiotic susceptibility pattern found the meropenem, piprecillin in combination with tazobactam and vancomycin as highly sensitive drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To find out the prevalence of patients with cleft lips and/or cleft palate and their association with risk factors. Study Design: Descriptive Cross-sectional study. Setting: Department of Plastic Surgery Jinnah Post-Graduate Medical Center, Karachi. Period: March 2020 to October 2021. Material & Methods: The patients with any age group or gender, who had cleft lip and/or palate were included in the study. The demographic details, personal and family history and clinical examination of the patients were noted on a preformed proforma. The data was analyzed by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20. The p-value less than 0.05 was considered as significant. Results: The mean age and standard deviation of the study participants was 41 ± 54 months. Male gender was predominant. History of cousin marriages were positive among 92.1% of the cases and 11.1% were having positive family history with p-value ≤0.05. Majority of cases were having both deformities including cleft lip and cleft palate with frequency of 55.2% while 30.2% of the individuals were suffering from cleft lip deformity. The affected cases of cleft palate were 14.6%. Majority of the study participants were male which predominantly reported bilateral cleft lip in association with cleft palate, followed by deformity of left cleft lip and palate. Among females the cleft palate deformity was more common (10.4%) than their male counterpart but there was no significant association with gender. Conclusion: Cleft deformities are one of the most common congenital anomaly in which the cleft lip associated with cleft palate is more prevalent. Majority of the affected individuals are males and mostly their parents have cousin marriages. Family history is also one of the major contributing factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One hundred ninety students at a southwestern urban university participated in a study that investigated ethnicity and sex differences in AIDS-related variables: AIDS knowledge, fear of AIDS, and homophobia. Analysis of data (ANOVA) revealed that African-Americans had significantly lower scores on measures of AIDS knowledge and were significantly more homophobic, compared to Caucasian students. African-Americans also had lower average AIDS knowledge scores than Hispanics. Women had a lower fear of AIDS than men. Relationships between homophobia and fear of AIDS on the one hand, and AIDS knowledge on the other hand, were low and counter-intuitive for African-Americans and Hispanics. This suggests the need for differential efforts in AIDS education programs targeting these groups. KEYWORDS. AIDS knowledge, fear of AIDS, AIDS education, sex differences, ethnicity differences