Suchandra Mukherjee - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Suchandra Mukherjee

Asian Journal of Medical Sciences

Background: Very low birth weight infants are at increased risk of developmental disorder. Early ... more Background: Very low birth weight infants are at increased risk of developmental disorder. Early identification is necessary for planning and implementation of early intervention. Aims and Objective: To test the association of neurological examination at 40 weeks and 3 months with neuro motor outcome of VLBW infants at 24 months and to identify the perinatal and neonatal risk factors for atypical neurological outcome. Materials and Methods: It is a prospective cohort study. Consecutive 120 VLBW infants were enrolled in a single centre level III neonatal unit of a teaching hospital. Neuro motor assessment was done by Dubowitz neurological examination at 40 weeks and by Hammersmith infant neurological examination (HINE) at 3 months and 12 months at neurodevelopmental clinic. Motor assessment were performed by Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) at 6 and 12 months and by Bayley Scale of Infant & Toddler scale, (BSID) 3rd edition at 6,12 and 24 months respectively. All assessment ages wer...

Indian Pediatrics, Jun 9, 2020

International Journal of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery

Background: Universal newborn hearing screening is a strategy to identify children with all kinds... more Background: Universal newborn hearing screening is a strategy to identify children with all kinds and degrees of hearing impairment, to lower the age at the time of diagnosis for early hearing amplification, to maximize their linguistic competence and literacy development. Methods: This study was conducted over the period of 9 months on 200 newborns selected from well-baby nursery and 30 infants from the SNCU unit of the hospitals to obtain field evidence of newborn hearing screening in Indian context by using TEOAE and AABR tests of MAICO easy screen beraphone instrument as well as to standardize the instrument. The process was carried out in different phases at different state government hospitals and the data was collected from the different departments of the hospitals. The obtained data were transferred to an excel spreadsheet. Then the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test and Wilcoxon Signed rank test were done by using SPSS software version 21. The detailed analysis was done for...

The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 2020

Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, 2011

Asian Journal of Medical Sciences

Background: Very low birth weight infants are at increased risk of developmental disorder. Early ... more Background: Very low birth weight infants are at increased risk of developmental disorder. Early identification is necessary for planning and implementation of early intervention. Aims and Objective: To test the association of neurological examination at 40 weeks and 3 months with neuro motor outcome of VLBW infants at 24 months and to identify the perinatal and neonatal risk factors for atypical neurological outcome. Materials and Methods: It is a prospective cohort study. Consecutive 120 VLBW infants were enrolled in a single centre level III neonatal unit of a teaching hospital. Neuro motor assessment was done by Dubowitz neurological examination at 40 weeks and by Hammersmith infant neurological examination (HINE) at 3 months and 12 months at neurodevelopmental clinic. Motor assessment were performed by Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) at 6 and 12 months and by Bayley Scale of Infant & Toddler scale, (BSID) 3rd edition at 6,12 and 24 months respectively. All assessment ages wer...

Antimicrobial Resistance & Infection Control

In this study, a novel method for automatically detecting sleep spindles from a given raw EEG (El... more In this study, a novel method for automatically detecting sleep spindles from a given raw EEG (Electroencephalogram) data is proposed. We do not use any feature extraction and learning technique. Rather, we model the visual perception of identifying rhythmic peaks within frequency range 11.5-15 Hz. To achieve the performance close to visual detection, we first use a Gaussian window for smoothening of the signal. Then peak detection method is applied for identifying visually distinguishable peaks. If the frequency of peaks lies within frequency range 11.5-15 Hz, then we declare existence of a sleep spindle. Validity of our process is determined by visual scoring of sleep spindles and comparing it with the automatic scoring. We get a specificity range of 89%-98% for a sensitivity range of 87%-96% which is better that any other automatic detection process.

In many medical examinations, image or video based automatic schemes are preferred over conventio... more In many medical examinations, image or video based automatic schemes are preferred over conventional approaches. Such schemes can greatly increase the efficacy and accuracy of various medical examinations. The work proposed in this article presents an image processing based method to automate adductors angle measurement which is carried out on infants as a part of Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE). It is used for assessing neurological development of infants aged below two years. During HINE, postures and reactions of the infant under consideration are recorded. An overall score is estimated and used to quantify the neurological development index of the baby. In the conventional approach, for measuring adductors angle, doctors use rulers. The proposed method uses image segmentation and thinning techniques to measure the angle without involvement of rulers. Results show that the proposed scheme can be used as an aid to the doctors for conducting such examinations.

Indian Journal of Pediatrics, 2011

Objective To review aetiological agents of neonatal sepsis and their antibiotic resistance patter... more Objective To review aetiological agents of neonatal sepsis and their antibiotic resistance pattern over the past 3 years, at a 20 bedded Level III neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in eastern India. Methods Blood culture reports of culture positive sepsis were reviewed for the period 2007–2009. Demographic data of the babies was collected. Results Blood culture was done for 997 neonates with suspected clinical sepsis. The incidence of culture proven neonatal sepsis among inborn babies was 14.8/1,000 live births. The proportion of culture positive sepsis for outborn babies admitted in neonatal intensive care unit was 8.3%. Gram negative aetiology was predominant (71.6%), with Klebsiella pneumoniae being the most common isolate. Non fermenting Gram negative bacilli like Acinetobacter sp emerged as an important cause of infection. The aetiology of early onset and late onset sepsis was similar. The proportion of resistance to common first and second line antibiotics like ampicillin (98.5%), gentamicin (84.4%), amikacin (65.6%) and cefotaxime (81.3%) was high. Conclusions The present study is the first in recent years from eastern India on aetiology and antimicrobial resistance in neonatal sepsis. Two areas of concern were the emergence of non fermenting Gram negative bacilli as causative organisms and the alarming degree of antibiotic resistance observed for commonly used antibiotics

Journal of Medical Systems

Ventriculomegaly is the most commonly detected abnormality in neonatal brain. It can be defined a... more Ventriculomegaly is the most commonly detected abnormality in neonatal brain. It can be defined as a condition when the human brain ventricle system becomes dilated. This in turn increases the intracranial pressure inside the skull resulting in progressive enlargement of the head. Sometimes it may also cause mental disability or death. For these reasons early detection of ventriculomegaly has become an important task. In order to identify ventriculomegaly from neonatal brain ultrasound images, we propose an automated image processing based approach that measures the anterior horn width as the distance between medial wall and floor of the lateral ventricle at the widest point. Measurement is done in the plane of the scan at the level of the intraventricular foramina. Our study is based on neonatal brain ultrasound images in the midline coronal view. In addition to ventriculomegaly detection, this work also includes both cross sectional and longitudinal study of anterior horn width of lateral ventricles. Experiments were carried out on brain ultrasound images of 96 neonates with gestational age ranging from 26 to 39 weeks and results have been verified with the ground truth provided by doctors. Accuracy of the proposed scheme is quite promising.

IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 2012

Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE) is a set of tests used for grading neurologica... more Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE) is a set of tests used for grading neurological development of infants on a scale of 0 to 3. These tests help in assessing neurophysiological development of babies, especially preterm infants who are born before (the fetus reaches) the gestational age of 36 weeks. Such tests are often conducted in the follow-up clinics of hospitals for grading infants with suspected disabilities. Assessment based on HINE depends on the expertise of the physicians involved in conducting the examinations. It has been noted that some of these tests, especially pulled-to-sit and lateral tilting, are difficult to assess solely based on visual observation. For example, during the pulled-to-sit examination, the examiner needs to observe the relative movement of the head with respect to torso while pulling the infant by holding wrists. The examiner may find it difficult to follow the head movement from the coronal view. Video object tracking based automatic or semi-automatic analysis can be helpful in this case. In this paper, we present a video based method to automate the analysis of pulled-to-sit examination. In this context, a dynamic programming and node pruning based efficient video object tracking algorithm has been proposed. Pulled-to-sit event detection is handled by the proposed tracking algorithm that uses a 2-D geometric model of the scene. The algorithm has been tested with normal as well as marker based videos of the examination recorded at the neuro-development clinic of the SSKM Hospital, Kolkata, India. It is found that the proposed algorithm is capable of estimating the pulled-to-sit score with sensitivity (80%-92%) and specificity (89%-96%).

Ventriculomegaly is one of the most sensitive markers for abnormal development of the fetal centr... more Ventriculomegaly is one of the most sensitive markers for abnormal development of the fetal central nervous system. So assessment of the size of lateral ventricles has become an important part of routine neurological assessment in neonates. We have proposed a method for measuring the width of lateral ventricles in term and preterm neonates from the coronal view of their brain

Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, 2007

ObjectivesTo evaluate the drug prescribing trends in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of a t... more ObjectivesTo evaluate the drug prescribing trends in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of a tertiary care hospital in eastern India.To evaluate the drug prescribing trends in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of a tertiary care hospital in eastern India.MethodsThe study was a prospective study that spanned for a period of 6 months from March 2005 to August 2005. Prescriptions and patient records were reviewed and analyzed using the World Health Organization (WHO) indicators for drug utilization studies. Rationality of drug usage was also evaluated by analyzing the drug prescriptions.The study was a prospective study that spanned for a period of 6 months from March 2005 to August 2005. Prescriptions and patient records were reviewed and analyzed using the World Health Organization (WHO) indicators for drug utilization studies. Rationality of drug usage was also evaluated by analyzing the drug prescriptions.ResultsA total of 176 neonates were admitted and 21 deaths were noted. The total number of drugs prescribed were 849. The average number of drugs per prescription was 4.8. The intravenous route (92.1%) was the commonest route of drug administration. 79.7% of the drugs were prescribed in generics. 30.2% of the total drugs prescribed were antimicrobials. It was noted that 88.6% of the drugs prescribed were in compliance with the National list of Essential Medicines 2003.A total of 176 neonates were admitted and 21 deaths were noted. The total number of drugs prescribed were 849. The average number of drugs per prescription was 4.8. The intravenous route (92.1%) was the commonest route of drug administration. 79.7% of the drugs were prescribed in generics. 30.2% of the total drugs prescribed were antimicrobials. It was noted that 88.6% of the drugs prescribed were in compliance with the National list of Essential Medicines 2003.ConclusionThe common diseases for which the neonates sought admission in the NICU were suspected septicaemia, birth asphyxia, neonatal jaundice and major congenital malformations. As antibiotics were the most frequently used drugs, their usage was analyzed in all cases. It was found to be rational in 84% of suspected septicaemia cases, as the provisional diagnosis on admission was confirmed with subsequent investigations thereby justifying appropriate antibiotic therapy. The diagnosis and treatment of other cases like neonatal jaundice, birth asphyxia, congenital malformations and electrolyte imbalance were rational and treatment was given as per treatment guidelines. Irrational usage of vitamins, nutritional supplements and parenteral fluids was not noted. The absence of the latest National essential list of medicines at the neonatology unit was noted. Secondly an antibiotic usage policy for the unit depending on the local microbial sensitivity pattern should have been in place. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The common diseases for which the neonates sought admission in the NICU were suspected septicaemia, birth asphyxia, neonatal jaundice and major congenital malformations. As antibiotics were the most frequently used drugs, their usage was analyzed in all cases. It was found to be rational in 84% of suspected septicaemia cases, as the provisional diagnosis on admission was confirmed with subsequent investigations thereby justifying appropriate antibiotic therapy. The diagnosis and treatment of other cases like neonatal jaundice, birth asphyxia, congenital malformations and electrolyte imbalance were rational and treatment was given as per treatment guidelines. Irrational usage of vitamins, nutritional supplements and parenteral fluids was not noted. The absence of the latest National essential list of medicines at the neonatology unit was noted. Secondly an antibiotic usage policy for the unit depending on the local microbial sensitivity pattern should have been in place. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

International Journal of E-health and Medical Communications, 2011

ABSTRACT Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE) is a popular method to estimate the n... more ABSTRACT Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE) is a popular method to estimate the neurological development of infants aged less than two years. Using HINE, especially for preterm or premature babies, the risk of neural disorder can be minimized ...

Monitoring neonatal EEG signal is useful in identifying neonatal convulsions or seizures. For neo... more Monitoring neonatal EEG signal is useful in identifying neonatal convulsions or seizures. For neonates, seizures can be electrographic, electro clinical, or both simultaneously. Electrographic seizure is identified via recorded EEG signal, while electro clinical seizures exhibit clinical manifestations. Sometimes neonates can exhibit silent seizures which may be clinically invisible but identifiable in recorded EEG, or vice versa. Thus, simultaneous monitoring of video and recorded EEG determines the correlation between the electrographic and electro clinical seizures. Furthermore, analyzing the movements of the neonates can identify movement artifacts easily, thus preventing false seizure detection. However, storage of high quality video recordings require large storage space. As neonates do not commonly exhibit movements, summarizing the video for storing only patient movements along with corresponding timestamps, can be useful. In this paper, a video summarization method is proposed for efficient browsing of video-EEG. Identification and analysis of the patterns of interest is possible via summarized information, thus reducing effective analysis time. In addition, quantitative demonstration of electrographic and electro clinical seizures is presented to analyze the utility of video-EEG.

Asian Journal of Medical Sciences

Background: Very low birth weight infants are at increased risk of developmental disorder. Early ... more Background: Very low birth weight infants are at increased risk of developmental disorder. Early identification is necessary for planning and implementation of early intervention. Aims and Objective: To test the association of neurological examination at 40 weeks and 3 months with neuro motor outcome of VLBW infants at 24 months and to identify the perinatal and neonatal risk factors for atypical neurological outcome. Materials and Methods: It is a prospective cohort study. Consecutive 120 VLBW infants were enrolled in a single centre level III neonatal unit of a teaching hospital. Neuro motor assessment was done by Dubowitz neurological examination at 40 weeks and by Hammersmith infant neurological examination (HINE) at 3 months and 12 months at neurodevelopmental clinic. Motor assessment were performed by Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) at 6 and 12 months and by Bayley Scale of Infant & Toddler scale, (BSID) 3rd edition at 6,12 and 24 months respectively. All assessment ages wer...

Indian Pediatrics, Jun 9, 2020

International Journal of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery

Background: Universal newborn hearing screening is a strategy to identify children with all kinds... more Background: Universal newborn hearing screening is a strategy to identify children with all kinds and degrees of hearing impairment, to lower the age at the time of diagnosis for early hearing amplification, to maximize their linguistic competence and literacy development. Methods: This study was conducted over the period of 9 months on 200 newborns selected from well-baby nursery and 30 infants from the SNCU unit of the hospitals to obtain field evidence of newborn hearing screening in Indian context by using TEOAE and AABR tests of MAICO easy screen beraphone instrument as well as to standardize the instrument. The process was carried out in different phases at different state government hospitals and the data was collected from the different departments of the hospitals. The obtained data were transferred to an excel spreadsheet. Then the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test and Wilcoxon Signed rank test were done by using SPSS software version 21. The detailed analysis was done for...

The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 2020

Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, 2011

Asian Journal of Medical Sciences

Background: Very low birth weight infants are at increased risk of developmental disorder. Early ... more Background: Very low birth weight infants are at increased risk of developmental disorder. Early identification is necessary for planning and implementation of early intervention. Aims and Objective: To test the association of neurological examination at 40 weeks and 3 months with neuro motor outcome of VLBW infants at 24 months and to identify the perinatal and neonatal risk factors for atypical neurological outcome. Materials and Methods: It is a prospective cohort study. Consecutive 120 VLBW infants were enrolled in a single centre level III neonatal unit of a teaching hospital. Neuro motor assessment was done by Dubowitz neurological examination at 40 weeks and by Hammersmith infant neurological examination (HINE) at 3 months and 12 months at neurodevelopmental clinic. Motor assessment were performed by Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) at 6 and 12 months and by Bayley Scale of Infant & Toddler scale, (BSID) 3rd edition at 6,12 and 24 months respectively. All assessment ages wer...

Antimicrobial Resistance & Infection Control

In this study, a novel method for automatically detecting sleep spindles from a given raw EEG (El... more In this study, a novel method for automatically detecting sleep spindles from a given raw EEG (Electroencephalogram) data is proposed. We do not use any feature extraction and learning technique. Rather, we model the visual perception of identifying rhythmic peaks within frequency range 11.5-15 Hz. To achieve the performance close to visual detection, we first use a Gaussian window for smoothening of the signal. Then peak detection method is applied for identifying visually distinguishable peaks. If the frequency of peaks lies within frequency range 11.5-15 Hz, then we declare existence of a sleep spindle. Validity of our process is determined by visual scoring of sleep spindles and comparing it with the automatic scoring. We get a specificity range of 89%-98% for a sensitivity range of 87%-96% which is better that any other automatic detection process.

In many medical examinations, image or video based automatic schemes are preferred over conventio... more In many medical examinations, image or video based automatic schemes are preferred over conventional approaches. Such schemes can greatly increase the efficacy and accuracy of various medical examinations. The work proposed in this article presents an image processing based method to automate adductors angle measurement which is carried out on infants as a part of Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE). It is used for assessing neurological development of infants aged below two years. During HINE, postures and reactions of the infant under consideration are recorded. An overall score is estimated and used to quantify the neurological development index of the baby. In the conventional approach, for measuring adductors angle, doctors use rulers. The proposed method uses image segmentation and thinning techniques to measure the angle without involvement of rulers. Results show that the proposed scheme can be used as an aid to the doctors for conducting such examinations.

Indian Journal of Pediatrics, 2011

Objective To review aetiological agents of neonatal sepsis and their antibiotic resistance patter... more Objective To review aetiological agents of neonatal sepsis and their antibiotic resistance pattern over the past 3 years, at a 20 bedded Level III neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in eastern India. Methods Blood culture reports of culture positive sepsis were reviewed for the period 2007–2009. Demographic data of the babies was collected. Results Blood culture was done for 997 neonates with suspected clinical sepsis. The incidence of culture proven neonatal sepsis among inborn babies was 14.8/1,000 live births. The proportion of culture positive sepsis for outborn babies admitted in neonatal intensive care unit was 8.3%. Gram negative aetiology was predominant (71.6%), with Klebsiella pneumoniae being the most common isolate. Non fermenting Gram negative bacilli like Acinetobacter sp emerged as an important cause of infection. The aetiology of early onset and late onset sepsis was similar. The proportion of resistance to common first and second line antibiotics like ampicillin (98.5%), gentamicin (84.4%), amikacin (65.6%) and cefotaxime (81.3%) was high. Conclusions The present study is the first in recent years from eastern India on aetiology and antimicrobial resistance in neonatal sepsis. Two areas of concern were the emergence of non fermenting Gram negative bacilli as causative organisms and the alarming degree of antibiotic resistance observed for commonly used antibiotics

Journal of Medical Systems

Ventriculomegaly is the most commonly detected abnormality in neonatal brain. It can be defined a... more Ventriculomegaly is the most commonly detected abnormality in neonatal brain. It can be defined as a condition when the human brain ventricle system becomes dilated. This in turn increases the intracranial pressure inside the skull resulting in progressive enlargement of the head. Sometimes it may also cause mental disability or death. For these reasons early detection of ventriculomegaly has become an important task. In order to identify ventriculomegaly from neonatal brain ultrasound images, we propose an automated image processing based approach that measures the anterior horn width as the distance between medial wall and floor of the lateral ventricle at the widest point. Measurement is done in the plane of the scan at the level of the intraventricular foramina. Our study is based on neonatal brain ultrasound images in the midline coronal view. In addition to ventriculomegaly detection, this work also includes both cross sectional and longitudinal study of anterior horn width of lateral ventricles. Experiments were carried out on brain ultrasound images of 96 neonates with gestational age ranging from 26 to 39 weeks and results have been verified with the ground truth provided by doctors. Accuracy of the proposed scheme is quite promising.

IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 2012

Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE) is a set of tests used for grading neurologica... more Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE) is a set of tests used for grading neurological development of infants on a scale of 0 to 3. These tests help in assessing neurophysiological development of babies, especially preterm infants who are born before (the fetus reaches) the gestational age of 36 weeks. Such tests are often conducted in the follow-up clinics of hospitals for grading infants with suspected disabilities. Assessment based on HINE depends on the expertise of the physicians involved in conducting the examinations. It has been noted that some of these tests, especially pulled-to-sit and lateral tilting, are difficult to assess solely based on visual observation. For example, during the pulled-to-sit examination, the examiner needs to observe the relative movement of the head with respect to torso while pulling the infant by holding wrists. The examiner may find it difficult to follow the head movement from the coronal view. Video object tracking based automatic or semi-automatic analysis can be helpful in this case. In this paper, we present a video based method to automate the analysis of pulled-to-sit examination. In this context, a dynamic programming and node pruning based efficient video object tracking algorithm has been proposed. Pulled-to-sit event detection is handled by the proposed tracking algorithm that uses a 2-D geometric model of the scene. The algorithm has been tested with normal as well as marker based videos of the examination recorded at the neuro-development clinic of the SSKM Hospital, Kolkata, India. It is found that the proposed algorithm is capable of estimating the pulled-to-sit score with sensitivity (80%-92%) and specificity (89%-96%).

Ventriculomegaly is one of the most sensitive markers for abnormal development of the fetal centr... more Ventriculomegaly is one of the most sensitive markers for abnormal development of the fetal central nervous system. So assessment of the size of lateral ventricles has become an important part of routine neurological assessment in neonates. We have proposed a method for measuring the width of lateral ventricles in term and preterm neonates from the coronal view of their brain

Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, 2007

ObjectivesTo evaluate the drug prescribing trends in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of a t... more ObjectivesTo evaluate the drug prescribing trends in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of a tertiary care hospital in eastern India.To evaluate the drug prescribing trends in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of a tertiary care hospital in eastern India.MethodsThe study was a prospective study that spanned for a period of 6 months from March 2005 to August 2005. Prescriptions and patient records were reviewed and analyzed using the World Health Organization (WHO) indicators for drug utilization studies. Rationality of drug usage was also evaluated by analyzing the drug prescriptions.The study was a prospective study that spanned for a period of 6 months from March 2005 to August 2005. Prescriptions and patient records were reviewed and analyzed using the World Health Organization (WHO) indicators for drug utilization studies. Rationality of drug usage was also evaluated by analyzing the drug prescriptions.ResultsA total of 176 neonates were admitted and 21 deaths were noted. The total number of drugs prescribed were 849. The average number of drugs per prescription was 4.8. The intravenous route (92.1%) was the commonest route of drug administration. 79.7% of the drugs were prescribed in generics. 30.2% of the total drugs prescribed were antimicrobials. It was noted that 88.6% of the drugs prescribed were in compliance with the National list of Essential Medicines 2003.A total of 176 neonates were admitted and 21 deaths were noted. The total number of drugs prescribed were 849. The average number of drugs per prescription was 4.8. The intravenous route (92.1%) was the commonest route of drug administration. 79.7% of the drugs were prescribed in generics. 30.2% of the total drugs prescribed were antimicrobials. It was noted that 88.6% of the drugs prescribed were in compliance with the National list of Essential Medicines 2003.ConclusionThe common diseases for which the neonates sought admission in the NICU were suspected septicaemia, birth asphyxia, neonatal jaundice and major congenital malformations. As antibiotics were the most frequently used drugs, their usage was analyzed in all cases. It was found to be rational in 84% of suspected septicaemia cases, as the provisional diagnosis on admission was confirmed with subsequent investigations thereby justifying appropriate antibiotic therapy. The diagnosis and treatment of other cases like neonatal jaundice, birth asphyxia, congenital malformations and electrolyte imbalance were rational and treatment was given as per treatment guidelines. Irrational usage of vitamins, nutritional supplements and parenteral fluids was not noted. The absence of the latest National essential list of medicines at the neonatology unit was noted. Secondly an antibiotic usage policy for the unit depending on the local microbial sensitivity pattern should have been in place. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.The common diseases for which the neonates sought admission in the NICU were suspected septicaemia, birth asphyxia, neonatal jaundice and major congenital malformations. As antibiotics were the most frequently used drugs, their usage was analyzed in all cases. It was found to be rational in 84% of suspected septicaemia cases, as the provisional diagnosis on admission was confirmed with subsequent investigations thereby justifying appropriate antibiotic therapy. The diagnosis and treatment of other cases like neonatal jaundice, birth asphyxia, congenital malformations and electrolyte imbalance were rational and treatment was given as per treatment guidelines. Irrational usage of vitamins, nutritional supplements and parenteral fluids was not noted. The absence of the latest National essential list of medicines at the neonatology unit was noted. Secondly an antibiotic usage policy for the unit depending on the local microbial sensitivity pattern should have been in place. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

International Journal of E-health and Medical Communications, 2011

ABSTRACT Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE) is a popular method to estimate the n... more ABSTRACT Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE) is a popular method to estimate the neurological development of infants aged less than two years. Using HINE, especially for preterm or premature babies, the risk of neural disorder can be minimized ...

Monitoring neonatal EEG signal is useful in identifying neonatal convulsions or seizures. For neo... more Monitoring neonatal EEG signal is useful in identifying neonatal convulsions or seizures. For neonates, seizures can be electrographic, electro clinical, or both simultaneously. Electrographic seizure is identified via recorded EEG signal, while electro clinical seizures exhibit clinical manifestations. Sometimes neonates can exhibit silent seizures which may be clinically invisible but identifiable in recorded EEG, or vice versa. Thus, simultaneous monitoring of video and recorded EEG determines the correlation between the electrographic and electro clinical seizures. Furthermore, analyzing the movements of the neonates can identify movement artifacts easily, thus preventing false seizure detection. However, storage of high quality video recordings require large storage space. As neonates do not commonly exhibit movements, summarizing the video for storing only patient movements along with corresponding timestamps, can be useful. In this paper, a video summarization method is proposed for efficient browsing of video-EEG. Identification and analysis of the patterns of interest is possible via summarized information, thus reducing effective analysis time. In addition, quantitative demonstration of electrographic and electro clinical seizures is presented to analyze the utility of video-EEG.