Seventy males (40 smokers and 30 non-smokers) between the ages of 35 to 70 years were selected for this study. A detailed medical and smoking history was taken and a thorough medical examination was done. Smokers included had history of smoking 10 or more cigarettes per day for at least 5 years. None of the subjects were found to have diabetes, liver or respiratory disease, congestive cardiac f...

Unrestrained, quiescent starry flounder maintained approximately normal levels of O2 uptake in the face of severe experimental anaemia. At haematocrits above about 5%, the only major compensation was a reduction in venous O2 tension which lowered venous saturation and thereby kept a constant difference between arterial and venous O2 contents. Below a haematocrit of about 5%, this difference dec...

A retrospective study was conducted to investigate 183 serologically-confirmed cases of dengue fever (DF) admitted from October 2004 to March 2005 in a large hospital in Pahang. Clinical and laboratory features, progress and outcome of these patients were analysed in order to identify risk factors associated with development of dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) and dengue shock syndrome (DSS). In...

The results of the whole blood VerifyNow P2Y12 assay can be expressed as platelet reaction units (PRU) or % inhibition index (%inh), but an optimal cut-off for the assessment of high on-treatment platelet reactivity (HPR) predictive of clinical events has been validated only for PRU. The aim of the study was to study the influence of haematological variables, such as platelet and leukocyte coun...

This prospective study was designed to provide the frequencies of the haemoglobin genotypes, ABO and Rh blood groups and their effects on the haematocrit values among pregnant women in Port Harcourt. One hundred and eighty (180) pregnant women at their first clinic attendance and in their first pregnancy (parity - 0) participated in this study. The overall frequencies obtained for ABO and Rh bl...

Aims: The Nova StatStrip blood glucose monitoring system was evaluated for precision, accuracy, and interferences from haematocrit and maltose. It was also compared against three other meters and two reference methods. Methods: Heparinised whole blood samples were analysed on the meters. These results were compared with whole blood samples analysed on the Radiometer ABL835 for the interference ...

Anaemia is a common morbidity in the NICU and often requires transfusion of packed red blood cells. Haematocrit equilibration following red cell transfusion occurs over time ultimately resulting in a stable packed cell volume (PCV). Knowledge of this equilibration process is pertinent in the accurate timing of posttransfusion (PT) PCV. We conducted a prospective study to determine an appropriat...

BACKGROUND Intradialytic hypotension (IDH) during ultrafiltration remains a major source of haemodialysis related morbidity, despite technological advances including continuous haematocrit monitoring and automated blood volume controlled dialysis machines. We hypothesized that studying the relationship between ultrafiltration rate and plasma refill rate (UFR, PRR) before and during IDH would pr...

The risk of bleeding associated with intracoronary infusion of streptokinase in acute myocardial infarction was determined in a randomised controlled trial containing 302 patients under the age of 70. Intracoronary streptokinase infusion was given to 152 patients and 150 patients were treated conventionally. Bleeding was seen in 24 (16%) patients in the streptokinase group and in two of the con...