Ethiopian medical journal
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Ethiopian medical journal · Jan 2012
Review Historical ArticleEthiopian Medical Journal: an overview assessment of the last 50 years.
The Ethiopian Medical Journal celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2012. To mark this anniversary reviewing a bit of history, and addressing the current status and challenges of the Journal would therefore be appropriate. This paper attempts to highlight some important developments and give a quick3review of the papers published over the last five decades. ⋯ The journal played a key role in transforming medical knowledge and was a sound tool in disseminating timely and relevant information in Ethiopia and is going strong.
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Ethiopian medical journal · Jan 2012
Degree of bacterial contamination and antibiotic susceptibility pattern of isolates from housekeeping surfaces in operating rooms and surgical wards at Jimma University Specialized Hospital, south west Ethiopia.
The role of the hospital environment as a reservoir of potential pathogens has received increasing attention. There are several reports demonstrating contamination of a wide variety of environmental sites in operating rooms (ORs) and surgical wards (SWs) which lead to nosocomial spread. ⋯ An increased bacterial contamination was measured in both ORs and SWs of the JUSH and the isolated bacteria were also resistant for most of the antibiotics used as a treatment options in the study area. Therefore, appropriate infection control measures needs to be taken to keep the contamination level within the proposed standard.
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Disc degeneration is common, the pattern and prevalence of various signs of disc degeneration is unclear. Neither hospital nor population-based data or study is available on lumbar disc diseases in Ethiopia. The sequelae of disk degeneration are among the leading causes of functional incapacity in both sexes and are a common source of chronic disability in the working years. Lumbar disc disease refers to a collection of degenerative disorders that can lead to low back pain as people age. ⋯ The study reviews 364 patients with lumbar disc diseases at the neurosurgical referral clinic, TASH over the one-year period (2009), their age ranged from 20 to 82 years (median, 44.0). Pain, numbness and neurologic claudication were the three most common presenting symptoms, occurring in 337(92.5%), 232 (63.7.6%) and 111 (30.5%) respectively. Lumbar MRI was the statistically significant investigation modality of choice (p < 0.0001). Two hundred thirty-five (70.1%) patients had disc prolaps (P < 0.0001), 18.5% had disc bulge. Lumbar degenerative disc disease was most frequently seen at L4-L5 level in 309 (54.5%) patients (P < 0.0001). both L4-L5 and L5-S1 accounted for 79.1% of the disc displacements. On MRI, disc displacements, were central in 61.2%, lateral in 9.3% and posterolateral in 15.8%.