Search

Objectives: This study was conducted to find out knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of epilepsy among 12 th -class students in Uttarakhand state. Secondly data of Uttarakhand was compared with KAP study from other parts of the country. Materials and Methods: All 12 th - class students studying in six schools of randomly selected 36 villages in Chakrata block of Dehradun district of Uttarakhand state were provided a printed questionnaire having answer as "yes or no". This questionnaire used was used previously by various authors and validated for KAP analysis. These filled questionnaires were collected by village health workers and medical officer. Results: This study conducted on 219, 12 th -class students revealed that epilepsy was heard by 98%, 74.9% thought epilepsy a mental disease and 4.8% believed that it is contagious. Negative attitude showed as nearly 2/3 rd students stated that epilepsy is hindrance in marriage and occupation. Nearly 41% would use onion or shoe for terminating seizure attack. Ayurvedic treatment was preferred over allopathic drugs. Conclusions: Study on 12 th -class students of Uttarakhand revealed poor knowledge, attitude and practice for epilepsy and needs special education program to dispel these misconceptions.

Byline: Deepak. Goel, Alka. Agarwal, J. Dhanai, V. Semval, V. Mehrotra, V. Saxena, B. Maithili Sir, Uttarakhand is the youngest state of India covering hills of Himalayas. We conducted community-based [...]

Background: This study aimed to screen cardiovascular patients for depressive symptoms at a tertiary centre in Trinidad and Tobago; and to determine any significant associations amongst patients' demographics, comorbidities, and cardiovascular medications with depressive symptoms., Methods: In this observational, cross-sectional study, patients (n = 1203) were randomly selected from the cardiology outpatient clinics at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex. After meeting selection criteria, informed consent was obtained, and patients were administered a case report form, which included the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). Descriptive analyses included frequency, percentage and summary statistics. Inferential analyses included 95% confidence intervals (CIs), independent sample t-test, Fisher's exact test, Chi-square test, and multivariate logistic regression., Results: The study had a 96% respondent rate, whereby the average age was 62 years old. Slightly less than half were male, and 52.5% were female. Over 90 % of the sample had cardiovascular disease (CVD). One-quarter of the sample had a PHQ-9 score of ≥10, with almost one-fifth having no depressive symptoms. Females, lower levels of education and income were all found to be statistically significant at risk for depressive symptoms (all p-values < 0.001). Comorbidities associated with depressive symptoms included hypertension, prior cerebrovascular events, chronic kidney disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of OR 1.988 (CI 1.414-2.797), OR 1.847 (CI 1.251-2.728), OR 1.872 (CI 1.207-2.902) and OR 1.703 (CI 1.009-2.876) respectively. Only the cardiovascular medication of ticagrelor was found to be significantly associated with depressive symptoms (p-value < 0.001)., Conclusions: Twenty-five percent of screened cardiovascular patients displayed significant depressive symptoms with a PHQ-9 ≥ 10. This study also highlights the importance of implementing a multidisciplinary approach to managing cardiovascular disease and screening for depressive symptoms in this subpopulation. Further studies are required to validate these findings., Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT03863262 . This trial was retrospectively registered on 20th February 2019.