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The landslide disaster, feeble geology, rapid deforestation, poor drainage system, and increase in mechanical strain have weakened the Krishna Bhir slope, Prithvi Highway, Dhading, Nepal. The objective of this article was to study the problems associated with bioengineering implementation in hill road construction with recommendations. For primary research, a map study, field observation, in-depth interview, focus group discussion, and questionnaire survey were used as an instrument for the field study. Published reports, papers, a thesis, database, manuals, and field observation were also reviewed. The landslide caused loss of property, ill effects on lifestyle, disturbance in the movement of goods and services, loss of availability of water due to damage to the water supply system, damage to the sewage disposal system, etc. During the construction period using the bioengineering technique, the major problem occurred during the installation of the bioengineered system (RII = 0.791), lack of training during construction (RII = 0.839), unavailability of space (RII = 0.817), inadequate supply of appropriate instruments (RII = 0.821) and improper selection of vegetation types (RII=0.839). The major problems were also seen during site monitoring and evaluation (RII= 0.853). Proper selection of plant species (RII=0.936) before implementation of the bioengineering technique is needed at hill roads, but the high installation costs (RII=0.841) could be the major limitation. Bioengineering application has a bright future if proper actions are taken in time. Solutions need to be formulated and implemented by understanding the major limitations of bioengineering techniques.

Background: Heart failure is a leading cause of hospital admissions each year. In Nepal also the incidence of heart failure is increasing. Acute decompensated heart failure carries a poor prognosis. Most patients respond to intravenous loop diuretics but a substantial proportion of patients are resistant to them and may need additional diuretic agents like metolazone by the principle of “sequential nephron blockade”. Methods: In a hospital-based cross-sectional comparative study, we assigned 68 patients with acute decompensated chronic heart failure patients to receive furosemide at 1 mg/kg twice daily or furosemide at 1 mg/kg twice daily plus metolazone 5mg/day. The primary end-points were daily weight loss, negative water balance (difference between urine output and fluid intake) and symptomatic improvement on NYHA grading. Results: There were 55% males and 45% females in total. There was a significant difference (p-value =0.003) in mean weight loss observed between the two groups on day three, i.e., 0.971±0.6 kg and 1.5±0.78 kg in furosemide group and furosemide plus metolazone group respectively. Mean negative water significantly more in the combination group on day two (450±230.94 ml vs 750.59±416.92 ml) with p-value

Background and Aims: Diabetes mellitus is a well recognized risk factor for cardiovascular disease and acute coronary syndrome. It is becoming increasingly clear that pre-diabetic state is also associated with adverse clinical outcomes. However, evidence is limited regarding the prognostic value of 'prediabetes' on the clinical outcome of acute coronary syndrome. So, we aimed to assess the prevalence of prediabetes in acute coronary syndrome patients and its clinical outcome Methods: This was a single center descriptive cross-sectional study to know the prevalence of prediabetes in 115 patients consisting of 71 males and 44 females, admitted with acute coronary syndrome in the Department of Cardiology, B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Dharan, Nepal, between August 2020 to July 2021. Results: Based on the definition of 2020 American Diabetic Association, 35 (30.4%) patients were newly diagnosed diabetic, 46 (40%) patients were prediabetic and 34(29.6%) were non-diabetic. Based on HbA1c alone, 26.1% patients were classified as newly diagnosed diabetic patients, 38.3% patients were classified as prediabetic and 35.7% as non-diabetic. Compared with patients without diabetes, patients with prediabetes tended to have a longer hospital stay (p=0.04), higher creatine level (p=0.01) and higher incidence of heart failure (p=0.046). Conclusion: Prediabetes is common in patients presenting with acute coronary syndrome who are not previously known to have diabetes. Further multi-center studies with long term clinical follow-up are needed to draw a firm conclusion regarding the impact of prediabetes on clinical outcome

BACKGROUND: There is unequivocal evidence showing that at hospital environment BP levels are usually different from measures found at other settings. Therefore, ambulatory BP is expected to be more dependable, as well as allow the identification of a relevant subgroup of white-coat hypertension patient. METHODS: This was a single center descriptive cross-sectional study conducted to assess the prevalence of white-coat hypertension among 50 participants consisting of 31 males and 19 females referred for 24 hour Ambulatory BP monitoring in BPKIHS, Dharan, Nepal, between October 2021 to December 2021. RESULTS: The prevalence of white-coat hypertension was 19 (32%) among 50 participants, while 31(62%) of them had sustained hypertension. Prevalence of WCHTN and sustained hypertension in young age ≤35 years was 4 (21.1%) and 10 (32.3%) respectively, similarly middle age 36-54 years was 13(68.4%) and 16(51.6%) and elderly ≥55 years was 2(10.5%) and 5(16.1%) respectively. Most participants were of middle age group 36-54 years’ age. While of sex distribution pattern of WCHTN and sustained hypertension, male was 11(57.9%) and 20 (64.5%) respectively and female was 8(36.8%) and 15(48.4%) respectively. The association between the demographic variables age, sex and BMI and white-coat HTN was not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: The study showed that White-coat hypertension was more common in male patients and in middle age group 36-54 years, but was not statistically significant. Prevalence of white-coat hypertension was 19(38%). There was no significant association between white-coat hypertension and demographic variables.

BACKGROUND The 24hr ECG Holter monitoring system is helpful in assessing cardiac arrhythmias in patients presenting with palpitation, dizziness, presyncope and syncope, which are not detected by standard office electrocardiogram. METHODS This was a single center prospective observational study conducted to assess the prevalence of cardiac arrhythmias among 78 patients consisting of 41 males and 37 females referred for 24 hr ECG Holter monitoring in BPKIHS, Dharan, Nepal, between October 2021 to December 2021. RESULTS The most common indication for 24 hr ECG Holter monitoring in these patients was unexplained palpitation. Ventricular ectopics were the most common arrhythmias detected, followed by supraventricular ectopics, most of which were benign. Among 18 patients with significant bradyarrhythmia, 3 had sinus bradycardia with significant pause, 3 had AF with significant pause, and 2 had high grade/complete AV block. CONCLUSIONS The study showed that most of the arrhythmias detected are benign and prevalence of potentially fatal ventricular and supraventricular tachyarrythmias are relatively low in our population.

Background and Aims: Inflammation plays important role in atherosclerosis. Recently, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio(NLR) has emerged as new inflammatory marker in identification of coronary artery disease(CAD). We aimed to evaluate correlation of NLR with CAD severity and propose suitable cut-off NLR for predicting CAD. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 147 patients undergoing coronary angiography for angina with ischemic ECG changes. CAD severity was assessed by SYNTAX score and categorized into low, intermediate and high SYNTAX group. Neutrophil and lymphocyte count determined by BeneSphera analyser and NLR was calculated. Statistical analysis was performed using chi-square, ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation test and logistic regression analysis. Results: In 147 patients [mean age 61.27±12.87year (25-86 years);68% male],NLR ranged from 1.0 to 9.66[median 2.53(1.96-3.73 IQR), mean 3.21±1.86].The NLR (mean ± SD) in low, intermediate and high SYNTAX group were 2.35±1.27, 3.04±1.54l, 4.72±2.07 respectively (p3[OR=17.36, 95% CI 6.7-44.5, p=0.001] was identified as independent predictor of high SYNTAX score. In ROC analysis, NLR ≥ 1.785 was best suitable cut-off to identify presence of CAD with sensitivity of 97.4% and specificity of 83.3%. Conclusion: NLR correlated positively with presence and severity of CAD as assessed by SYNTAX score

To assess the effect of duration of catherization on urine analysis and on first voiding time after removal of catheter in postoperative period after caesarean section.Patients who have undergone caesarean section from June 2020 to June 2021. The catheter was in-situ post operatively. Urine sample from each patient was analyzed for routine microscopy before catheterization as well as after removal of catheter. Midstream clean catch urine was collected in sterile container and sent for urine routine analysis. As per duration of catheter in situ we divided the patients in four groupsPatients with catheter in situ- up to 24 hours, 24 to 48 hours, 48 to 72 hours, > 72 hours.Factors like urgency, frequency, dysuria and time required to void first time after removal of catheter were taken into consideration. > 4 pus cells in microscopy were taken as UTI.Urinary urgency and frequency were 91% in patient with catheter in situ for >24 hours. Out of 50 with duration of 1 to 3 hours catheter in situ, 48 had moderate dysuria, 10 with duration > 3 hours catheter in situ had dysuria in post- operatively. Of 35 with > 2 days of catheter in situ, 31 had UTI in postoperatively. Time taken to void the bladder initially was increased after removal of catheter in postoperatively.We have concluded that use of catheter for >24 hours is associated with increased incidence of urinary infection and more discomfort at first voiding.

Deep Learning (DL) has the potential to optimize machine learning in both the scientific and clinical communities. However, greater expertise is required to develop DL algorithms, and the variability of implementations hinders their reproducibility, translation, and deployment. Here we present the community-driven Generally Nuanced Deep Learning Framework (GaNDLF), with the goal of lowering these barriers. GaNDLF makes the mechanism of DL development, training, and inference more stable, reproducible, interpretable, and scalable, without requiring an extensive technical background. GaNDLF aims to provide an end-to-end solution for all DL-related tasks in computational precision medicine. We demonstrate the ability of GaNDLF to analyze both radiology and histology images, with built-in support for k-fold cross-validation, data augmentation, multiple modalities and output classes. Our quantitative performance evaluation on numerous use cases, anatomies, and computational tasks supports GaNDLF as a robust application framework for deployment in clinical workflows.

BACKGROUND: Lead avR is a valuable but mostly ignored lead in clinical electrocardiography. Recently, ST-segment depression in lead aVR during an inferior wall myocardial infarction has been suggested as a predictor of LCX artery involvement. METHODS: This study was a single centre cross sectional observational study done in BPKIHS, Dharan from February 2018 to January 2020. Patients presenting to the OPD or emergency room of BPKIHS diagnosed as acute inferior wall myocardial infarction based on clinical symptoms, ECG and/or Cardiac tropinin I levels, and planned for coronary angiography, meeting the inclusion and exclusion criterias were included. RESULTS: Among 134 cases, male:female ratio was 1.3:1. Overall, 38 patients (28.4%) were found to have aVR depression and 96 patients (71.6%) were without aVR depression. The culprit artery was found to be the right coronary artery in 95 patients (70.9%), the LCx in 39 patients (29.1%). The sensitivity and specificity of ST-segment depression in lead aVR for LCx as the culprit artery were 92.3% and 97.9% respectively. Positive predictive and Negative predictive value for LCx as the culprit arteries were 94.74% and 96.87%. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value for RCA as the culprit artery were 97.89%, 92.3%, 96.89% and 94.73% respectively. CONCLUSION: Significant ST depression in aVR is associated with a higher specificity and good sensitivity for LCX lesions, the ST changes in this lead should be carefully examined in all patients who are suspected of having inferior wall myocardial infarction.

Objective.De-centralized data analysis becomes an increasingly preferred option in the healthcare domain, as it alleviates the need for sharing primary patient data across collaborating institutions. This highlights the need for consistent harmonized data curation, pre-processing, and identification of regions of interest based on uniform criteria.Approach.Towards this end, this manuscript describes theFederatedTumorSegmentation (FeTS) tool, in terms of software architecture and functionality.Main results.The primary aim of the FeTS tool is to facilitate this harmonized processing and the generation of gold standard reference labels for tumor sub-compartments on brain magnetic resonance imaging, and further enable federated training of a tumor sub-compartment delineation model across numerous sites distributed across the globe, without the need to share patient data.Significance.Building upon existing open-source tools such as the Insight Toolkit and Qt, the FeTS tool is designed to enable training deep learning models targeting tumor delineation in either centralized or federated settings. The target audience of the FeTS tool is primarily the computational researcher interested in developing federated learning models, and interested in joining a global federation towards this effort. The tool is open sourced athttps://github.com/FETS-AI/Front-End.

Background: Vitamin D deficiency may be a risk factor for coronary artery disease (CAD). We aimed to measure the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in CAD and its association with severity of angiographic proven CAD. Methods: This prospective, cross-sectional study included 106 consecutive patients who were admitted for typical angina and had signs of myocardial injury (ECG findings and/ or elevated troponin I or CK-MB) and who underwent coronary angiography at the university hospital of BPKIHS from August 2020 to April 2021. Patients were categorized into angiographic proven CAD group and angiographic normal coronary artery group. Serum vitamin D level was classified as normal (≥ 30 ng/ml) and deficiency (< 30 ng/ml). Results: Out of 106 patients, 78 patients (73.6%) had vitamin D deficiency and 28 (26.4%) had normal vitamin D level (p = 0.39). Vitamin D level (mean ± SD) in patients with angiographic normal coronary artery and angiographic proven CAD were 25.94 ± 11.63 ng/ml and 26.07 ± 12.90 ng/ml respectively (p = 0.97). Prevalence of vitamin D deficiency was 75.0% and 64.3% in significant CAD group and normal coronary artery group respectively (p = 0.39). Similarly, frequency of vitamin D deficiency were 68.6%, 78.3% and 88.90% in single, double, and triple vessel disease respectively (p = 0.21). The vitamin D level (mean ± SD) in single, double and triple vessel disease were 27.31 ± 14.02 ng/ml, 25.69 ± 12.72 ng/ml, 23.08 ± 9.45 ng/ml respectively. Conclusion: The prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in both angiographic normal coronary artery and angiographic proven CAD were high but comparable. There was no association of vitamin D deficiency with severity of angiographic proven CAD.

Background: Left ventricular diastolic dysfunction (LVDD) represents the first stage of diabetic cardiomyopathy and is initially subclinical. Early diagnosis enables earlier treatment and stops further progression of the disease. Tissue Doppler Imaging (TDI) is a new diagnostic modality with high sensitivity and specificity to know ventricular diastolic function. N-terminal pro brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) is a cardiac neurohormone that can be used to identify the changes in ventricular diastolic function. We aimed to estimate the concentration of NT-proBNP and correlate its value with TDI for LVDD in asymptomatic type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Methods: In this comparative cross-sectional study, we enrolled 100 asymptomatic type 2 diabetic patients and 100 healthy people aged 30-60 years. In both groups, NT-proBNP levels were measured and the presence of LVDD was determined by TDI. The primary outcome parameter was the level of NT-proBNP in diabetics and healthy people. The secondary outcome parameter was the correlation of NT-proBNP level with various grades of LVDD. Results: In patients with LVDD, NT-proBNP levels [median (IQR)] were 123 (102,194) pg/ml in diabetics and 72 (67, 77) pg/ml in the control group. In patients without LVDD, NT-proBNP levels [median (IQR)] were 69 (59, 76) pg/ml in diabetics and 57 (49, 63) pg/ml in the control group. The level of NT-proBNP was significantly higher in those with LVDD (p < 0.001). NT-proBNP concentration significantly increased as grades of LVDD increased. Conclusion: NT-proBNP is a good marker for detection of preclinical LVDD in patients with uncontrolled diabetes prone to develop cardiovascular complications.

Background:The present study aimed to quantify the burden of structural heart disease in Nepali children.Methods:We performed a school-based cross-sectional echocardiographic screening study with cluster random sampling among children 5–16 years of age.Results:Between December 2012 and January 2019, 6573 children (mean age 10.6 ± 2.9 years) from 41 randomly selected schools underwent echocardiographic screening. Structural heart disease was detected in 14.0 per 1000 children (95% CI 11.3–17.1) and was congenital in 3.3 per 1000 (95% CI 2.1–5.1) and rheumatic in 10.6 per 1000 (95% CI 8.3–13.4). Rates of rheumatic heart disease were higher among children attending public as compared to private schools (OR 2.8, 95% CI 1.6–5.2, p = 0.0001).Conclusion:Rheumatic heart disease accounted for three out of four cases of structural heart disease and was more common among children attending public as compared to private schools.

Treatment success rates for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) remain low globally. Availability of newer drugs has given scope to develop regimens that can be patient-friendly, less toxic, with improved outcomes. We proposed to determine the effectiveness of an entirely oral, short-course regimen with Bedaquiline and Delamanid in treating MDR-TB with additional resistance to fluoroquinolones (MDR-TBFQ+) or second-line injectable (MDR-TBSLI+).We prospectively determined the effectiveness and safety of combining two new drugs with two repurposed drugs - Bedaquiline, Delamanid, Linezolid, and Clofazimine for 24-36 weeks in adults with pulmonary MDR-TBFQ+ or/and MDR-TBSLI+. The primary outcome was a favorable response at end of treatment, defined as two consecutive negative cultures taken four weeks apart. The unfavorable outcomes included bacteriologic or clinical failure during treatment period.Of the 165 participants enrolled, 158 had MDR-TBFQ+. At the end of treatment, after excluding 12 patients due to baseline drug susceptibility and culture negatives, 139 of 153 patients (91%) had a favorable outcome. Fourteen patients (9%) had unfavorable outcomes: four deaths, seven treatment changes, two bacteriological failures, and one withdrawal. During treatment, 85 patients (52%) developed myelosuppression, 69 (42%) reported peripheral neuropathy, and none had QTc(F) prolongation500msec. At 48 weeks of follow-up, 131 patients showed sustained treatment success with the resolution of adverse events in the majority.After 24-36 weeks of treatment, this regimen resulted in a satisfactory favorable outcome in pulmonary MDR-TB patients with additional drug resistance. Cardiotoxicity was minimal, and myelosuppression, while common, was detected early and treated successfully.

Background and Objectives: Iron Deficiency is the commonest nutritional deficiency worldwide, affecting more than one-third of the population, its association with Heart Failure with or without anemia is of growing interest. As iron supplementation improves prognosis in patients with Heart Failure, Iron Deficiency is an attractive therapeutic target – a hypothesis that has recently been tested in clinical studies. This study is designed to estimate the prevalence and pattern of iron deficiency (ID) in heart failure (HF) with reduced ejection fraction patients with or without anemia. Material and methods: It was a single center hospital based cross sectional observational study. A total of 60 male and female patients with diagnosis of heart failure based on the Framingham Criteria, who gave consent for the study were included. They underwent laboratory evaluation including hemoglobin concentration, serum iron, transferrin saturation percentage, serum ferritin, total iron binding capacity. Serum ferritin

BACKGROUND Diffuse astrocytic glioma are common and aggressive malignant primary brain tumors with grim prognosis. Artificial intelligence (AI) has shown promise across predictive, prognostic, and diagnostic neuro-oncology applications, towards improving patient management. However, clinical translation and deployment are hampered by AI models’ requirements for explicit acceleration cards, which are not typically considered in clinical environments. Here, we seek the execution of AI models in such clinical/low-resource environments, facilitated by mathematical optimizations rather than investing in acceleration cards, and focus on the use case of delineating clinically-relevant regions, namely the entire tumor burden (ETB) and tumor core (TC). METHODS We identified the BraTS20 retrospective cohort of 369 glioma cases, each described by 4 structural multi-parametric MRI (mpMRI) scans (T1,T1Gd,T2,T2-FLAIR). The Generally Nuanced Deep Learning Framework (GaNDLFv0.0.14/PyTorchv1.8.2) was used to train the original AI model (ResUNet), by randomly sampling 40 643 patches from each mpMRI scan. We then investigate the contributions of post-training mathematical optimizations. Quantitative performance evaluation of the original and optimized (GaNDLFv0.0.14/OpenVINOTM-INT8-v2022.1.0) models were based on 125 unseen hold-out cases (BraTS20 validation dataset), using the dice similarity coefficient (DSC), while profiling in a consumer-grade workstation, i.e., typical clinical hardware configuration. RESULTS Negligible delineation performance differences were observed between the original and optimized AI models, for both ETB (DSCoriginal/DSCoptimized= 0.877/0.876) and TC (DSCoriginal/DSCoptimized= 0.773/0.772). However, the optimized model yielded substantial improvements in latency (up to 5.4x faster inference) and 53% less memory footprint. CONCLUSIONS Post-training mathematical optimization of AI models yields substantial gains in latency and memory usage, while maintaining their accuracy. Although we focused on delineation, we anticipate these mathematical optimizations to be applicable in other AI models. Post-training optimization is a promising approach for deploying AI models on consumer-grade CPUs, and hence facilitating their translation in low-resource/clinical environments, potentially contributing to improved patient management, treatment decisions, and response assessment. *author Siddhesh Thakur is an equal contributing first author.

Key Points Question Is echocardiographic screening of schoolchildren in regions with an endemic pattern of rheumatic heart disease followed by secondary antibiotic prophylaxis in children with evidence of subclinical rheumatic heart disease effective in reducing the prevalence of rheumatic heart disease? Findings This cluster randomized clinical trial found a nonstatistically significant lower prevalence of definite or borderline rheumatic heart disease in schools with echocardiographic screening 4 years after intervention compared with control schools with no previous screening. An auxiliary repeated cross-sectional analysis of experimental schools found a significant reduction in the odds of definite or borderline rheumatic heart disease. Meaning A lower prevalence of rheumatic heart disease in schools with prior echocardiographic screening warrants further study of the effectiveness of early detection and timely treatment of rheumatic heart disease in children and adolescents., Importance Echocardiographic screening allows for early detection of subclinical stages of rheumatic heart disease among children in endemic regions. Objective To investigate the effectiveness of systematic echocardiographic screening in combination with secondary antibiotic prophylaxis on the prevalence of rheumatic heart disease. Design, Setting, and Participants This cluster randomized clinical trial included students 9 to 16 years of age attending public and private schools in urban and rural areas of the Sunsari district in Nepal that had been randomly selected on November 17, 2012. Echocardiographic follow-up was performed between January 7, 2016, and January 3, 2019. Interventions In the experimental group, children underwent systematic echocardiographic screening followed by secondary antibiotic prophylaxis in case they had echocardiographic evidence of latent rheumatic heart disease. In the control group, children underwent no echocardiographic screening. Main Outcomes and Measures Prevalence of the composite of definite or borderline rheumatic heart disease according to the World Heart Federation criteria in experimental and control schools as assessed 4 years after intervention. Results A total of 35 schools were randomized to the experimental group (n = 19) or the control group (n = 16). After a median of 4.3 years (interquartile range [IQR], 4.0-4.5 years), 17 of 19 schools in the experimental group (2648 children; median age at follow-up, 12.1 years; IQR, 10.3-12.5 years; 1308 [49.4%] male) and 15 of 16 schools in the control group (1325 children; median age at follow-up, 10.6 years; IQR, 10.0-12.5 years; 682 [51.5%] male) underwent echocardiographic follow-up. The prevalence of definite or borderline rheumatic heart disease was 10.8 per 1000 children (95% CI, 4.7-24.7) in the control group and 3.8 per 1000 children (95% CI, 1.5-9.8) in the experimental group (odds ratio, 0.34; 95% CI, 0.11-1.07; P = .06). The prevalence in the experimental group at baseline had been 12.9 per 1000 children (95% CI, 9.2-18.1). In the experimental group, the odds ratio of definite or borderline rheumatic heart disease at follow-up vs baseline was 0.29 (95% CI, 0.13-0.65; P = .008). Conclusions and Relevance School-based echocardiographic screening in combination with secondary antibiotic prophylaxis in children with evidence of latent rheumatic heart disease may be an effective strategy to reduce the prevalence of definite or borderline rheumatic heart disease in endemic regions. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01550068, This cluster randomized clinical trial investigates the effect of systematic echocardiographic screening in combination with secondary antibiotic prophylaxis on the prevalence of rheumatic heart disease in schoolchildren in Nepal.

Oral solid dosage forms, specifically immediate release tablets, are prevalent in the pharmaceutical industry. Disintegration testing is often the first step of commercialization and large-scale production of these dosage forms. Current disintegration testing in the pharmaceutical industry, according to United States Pharmacopeia (USP) chapter 〈701〉, only gives information about the duration of the tablet disintegration process. This information is subjective, variable, and prone to human error due to manual or physical data collection methods via the human eye or contact disks. To lessen the data integrity risk associated with this process, efforts have been made to automate the analysis of the disintegration process using digital lens and other imaging technologies. This would provide a non-invasive method to quantitatively determine disintegration time through computer algorithms. The main challenges associated with developing such a system involve visualization of tablet pieces through cloudy and turbid liquid. The Computer Vision for Disintegration (CVD) system has been developed to be used along with traditional pharmaceutical disintegration testing devices to monitor tablet pieces and distinguish them from the surrounding liquid. The software written for CVD utilizes data captured by cameras or other lenses then uses mobile SSD and CNN, with an OpenCV and FRCNN machine learning model, to analyze and interpret the data. This technology is capable of consistently identifying tablets with ≥ 99.6% accuracy. Not only is the data produced by CVD more reliable, but it opens the possibility of a deeper understanding of disintegration rates and mechanisms in addition to duration.

Background: Only few dedicated cardiac centres provide cardiac surgery service in Nepal. We are the only government affiliated centre outside the capital providing this service. In this study, we aim to present our early results of cardiac surgery.Methods: This retrospective study was conducted at B P Koirala Institute of Health Sciences with objective of analysing the early results of cardiac surgery in the patients operated from July 2016 to March 2017.The data were analysed for patient demographics, type of surgery and cardiac disease, mortality, hospital and intensive care unit stay, valve related complications.Results: Total 51 major cardiac surgeries (42 on pump and nine off pump) were performed. There were 27 (53%) males and 24 (47%) females with median age of 36 years (range: 1 to 70 years).The cardiac diseases consisted of 28 rheumatic heart disease, 12 congenital heart diseases, five coronary artery disease, five chronic constrictive pericarditis and one left atrial myxoma. The mean cardiopulmonary bypass and cross clamp times were 106 ±35 and 80±26 minutes respectively. The mean intensive care unit and hospital stay was 4±2 and 8±3 days respectively. Two (4%) patients required re-exploration for mediastinal bleeding. There was no prosthetic valve thrombosis or infection.Two patients (4%) had superficial wound infections.There were four (7.8%) in hospital mortalities. Remaining 47 patients (91.8%) are in NYHA class I aftermean follow up duration of five months.Conclusions: Our early result of cardiac surgery is encouraging and has established the safety and feasibility of starting open heart surgery in other parts of Nepal.Keywords: CABG; cardiac surgery; congenital heart disease; early results; RHD.

Background: Peripartum Cardiomyopathy (PPCM) is a pregnancy assosciated myocardial disease. It is a rare disease with unknown etiology. Certain characteristics are risk factors for the disease. Recognition of its risk factors is important for prevention and treatment. Objectives: To determine clinical characteristics, echocardiographic profile and in hospital outcome of patients with peripartum cardiomyopathy. Methods: This is a descriptive retrospective study. All patients files with the diagnosis of peripartum cardiomyopathy from 1 st November 2009 to 30 th December 2014 were studied. Demographic data, echocardiogram and in hospital outcome of patients were reviewed. Results: Sixty five patients were diagnosed with PPCM during the study period. Mean age was 28 ± 6.5yrs. Fifty eight patients (89%) were multigravida and only seven (11%) were primigravida. Only two patients had twin pregnancy. Fourty four (68%) presented after delivery and twenty one (32%) presented during pregnancy. Most of the patients 57 (88%) were in NYHA class III and IV. Fifty seven (88%) patients had moderate to severe Left ventricle systolic dysfunction. Five (8%) had preeclampsia, four (6%) had eclampsia and two developed gestational hypertension. Two patients were diabetic. None of the multiparous patients had history of PPCM. No maternal mortality was there. Fetal outcomes were good with all resulting live births and most were appropriate for gestational age.