Hospital Practices and Research

Abstract Background: Hospitals in the national capital were staring at the rising cases of pink eye, more than 100 of which had been daily hitting the outpatient departments of major hospitals in Delhi during the month of July 2023. Outbreaks of Conjunctivitis are common globally, with people across all age and socio-economic status getting affected.
Objectives: The aim of the study was to do a molecular analysis on the etiology in cases of epidemic keratoconjunctivitis.
Methods: A multicentric prospective observational study was carried out during the outbreak of conjunctivitis in Delhi. The clinical samples were processed by polymerase chain reaction for common etiology of acute keratoconjunctivitis.
Results: Adenoviral etiology was witnessed in 8.3% of cases, while no other bacterial or viral etiology could be documented.
Conclusion: Studying the etiological pattern of any outbreak of infections can provide insights into the prevalent transmissible pathogens and help in future preparedness.

Abstract Background: Outbreak detection algorithms could play a key role in public health surveillance.
Objectives: This study aimed to compare the performance of three algorithms (EWMA, Cumulative Sum (CUSUM), and Poisson Regression) using the reported COVID-19 data for outbreak detection.
Methods: Three outbreak detection algorithms were applied to the data of COVID-19 daily new cases in Iran between 19/02/2020 and 20/06/2022, and 344 simulated outbreak days were injected into the data sequences. The Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) Curve (AUC) and its 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were also computed.
Results: EWMA9 had the lowest AUC (51%). Among the different algorithms, EWMA9 with λ = 0.9 and CUSUM 1 had the highest sensitivity with 100 and 87% (95% CI: 84%-91%), respectively.
Conclusion: According to the results, CUSUM, EWMA, and poison regression showed appropriate performance in detecting the COVID-19 outbreaks. These algorithms can be extremely helpful for health practitioners and policymakers in the detection of infectious disease outbreaks.

Abstract

Abstract Background: From Gaya and adjoining regions, the trend in patients admitted with acute neurological illness was investigated. Illnesses were identified as sudden outbreaks of Japanese virus encephalitis (JE), Herpes simplex virus encephalitis (HSV-1&2), and other acute encephalitis syndrome (AES).
Objective: In the current study, an investigation was carried out to assess potential infectious pathogens in patients aged 16 years or younger who were admitted to Anugrah Narayan Magadh Memorial Medical College Hospital, Gaya, with encephalitis-like symptoms.
Methods: Cross-epidemiological, serological, and molecular biological studies were performed on samples collected from 71 patients below 16 years of age. Patients’ clinical histories, i.e. fever, socio-demographic characteristics, and other clinical data, were extracted from patient files.
Results: The results showed confirmed AES cases, including 49.30% JE and 7.04% HSV positive patients. A higher case-fatality rate of 40% in JE and 40% HSV cases below 7 years of age were observed during treatment would become an unavoidable concern. The epidemical sex ratio was observed to be higher in girls than in boys (1.26:1).
Conclusion: The results suggested that JE virus was found to be a main causative risk factor responsible for disease transmission in the outbreak area.