METHOD: This is a retrospective study of all the patients that had undergone endoscopic variceal surveillance at the Gastroenterology endoscopy unit, Serdang Hospital from 1st January 2015 to 31st March 2017. Patients' demography, aetiologies of liver cirrhosis, platelet level and international normalised ratio (INR) prior banding procedure, and the post EVL complications were recorded and further analysed with SPSS version 16.
RESULTS: In this study, 105 patients were screened for varices. Fifty-five of them had undergone EVL, with a quarter of the patients requiring repeated ligation. There was a male preponderance with 76.4%. 56.4% of patients were in age from 40-59 years. The majority of our patients were of the Malay ethnicity. The major aetiology for liver cirrhosis in our patients was viral hepatitis with Hepatitis C (31.0%), and Hepatitis B (20.0%). Most of our patients had platelet count >50,000 and INR <1.5 prior to EVL. There was no major complication in all of our subjects.
CONCLUSION: EVL is relatively safe and feasible treatment for prevention of oesophageal variceal bleeds with a low complication rate.
METHODS: Among participants with ICH enrolled in the TICH-2 (Tranexamic Acid for Hyperacute Primary Intracerebral Haemorrhage) trial, we assessed baseline scans for hematoma location and presence of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) using computed tomography (CT, simplified Edinburgh criteria) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; Boston criteria) and categorized ICH as lobar CAA, lobar non-CAA, and nonlobar. The main outcomes were HE and favorable functional outcome. We constructed multivariate regression models and assessed treatment effects using interaction terms.
RESULTS: A total of 2,298 out of 2,325 participants were included with available CT (98.8%; median age = 71 years, interquartile range = 60-80 years; 1,014 female). Additional MRI was available in 219 patients (9.5%). Overall, 1,637 participants (71.2%) had nonlobar ICH; the remaining 661 participants (28.8%) had lobar ICH, of whom 202 patients had lobar CAA-ICH (8.8%, 173 participants according to Edinburgh and 29 participants according to Boston criteria) and 459 did not (lobar non-CAA, 20.0%). For HE, we found a significant interaction of lobar CAA ICH with time from onset to randomization (increasing risk with time, pinteraction
METHODS: The rats were divided into seven groups according to their pretreatment: an untreated control group, an ulcer control group, a reference control group (20 mg/kg omeprazole), and four experimental groups (50, 100, 200, or 400 mg/kg of extract). Carboxymethyl cellulose was the vehicle for the agents. Prior to the induction of gastric ulcers with absolute ethanol, the rats in each group were pretreated orally. An hour later, the rats were sacrificed, and gastric tissues were collected to evaluate the ulcers and to measure enzymatic activity. The tissues were subjected to histological and immunohistochemical evaluations.
RESULTS: Compared with the extensive mucosal damage in the ulcer control group, gross evaluation revealed a marked protection of the gastric mucosa in the experimental groups, with significantly preserved gastric wall mucus. In these groups, superoxide dismutase and malondialdehyde levels were significantly increased (P < 0.05) and reduced (P < 0.05), respectively. In addition to the histologic analyses (HE and periodic acid-Schiff staining), immunohistochemistry confirmed the protection through the upregulation of Hsp70 and the downregulation of Bax proteins. The gastroprotection of the experimental groups was comparable to that of the reference control medicine omeprazole.
CONCLUSIONS: Our study reports the gastroprotective property of an ethanolic extract of C. olitorius against ethanol-induced gastric mucosal hemorrhagic lesions in rats.