9 weeks with up to 15 (65.2%) patients presenting in the second trimester. Eighteen (78.3%) patients had histopathologically proven appendicitis giving a negative appendectomy rate of 21.7%. Postoperative complications were noted in eight (34.8%) patients. Half of these occurred within the negative appendectomy group. The negative appendectomy group also contributed significantly to the adverse obstetric outcome: preterm labor, 8.7% of 21.7%, preterm delivery, 4.5% selleck products of 13.6% and a fetal

loss rate of 4.3% of 13%. One maternal death occurred in the group with diseased appendix giving a maternal mortality rate of 4.3%.

Conclusions: While a higher index of suspicion among clinicians will ensure earlier diagnosis and improve the associated maternal and fetal prognosis, the need to reduce the negative laparotomy rate is highlighted by the high rate of adverse obstetric outcomes amongst the negative appendectomy group.”
“Background: Dysphagia is a major complication of stroke, but factors influencing its recovery are incompletely understood. The goal of this study was to identify important prognostic variables affecting swallowing recovery after acute ischemic stroke. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed our patient

database to identify acute ischemic stroke patients who developed dysphagia after stroke but were free of other confounding conditions affecting swallowing. Of the 1774 patients screened, 323 met the study criteria. We assessed ATM inhibitor cancer the effect of age, sex, baseline National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score, level of consciousness (LOC),

facial weakness, dysarthria, neglect, bihemispheric Vadimezan infarcts, right hemispheric infarcts, brainstem infarcts, intubation, aspiration, acute stroke therapies, occurrence of symptomatic hemorrhagic transformation, seizures, pneumonia, and length of hospitalization (LOH) on persistence of dysphagia at hospital discharge in a logistic regression analysis. Results: The mean age and NIHSS scores (mean 6 standard deviation) were 75.9 +/- 13.6 years and 13.5 +/- 6.9, respectively; 58.5% were women. In a multivariate analysis, aspiration detected on a clinical swallowing evaluation (odds ratio [OR] 21.83; 95% confidence interval [CI] 8.16-58.42; P < .0001), aspiration on videofluoroscopic swallowing study (OR 10.50; 95% CI 3.35-32.96; P < .0001), bihemispheric infarcts (OR 3.72; 95% CI 1.33-10.43; P = .0123), dysarthria (OR 3.4; 95% CI 1.57-7.35; P = .0019), intubation (OR 2.86; 95% CI 1.10-7.39; P = .0301), NIHSS score >= 12 (OR 2.51; 95% CI 1.19-5.23; P – .0157) were significant predictors of persistent dysphagia. The area under the curve and Somer’s D-xy statistics of the model were 0.8918 and 0.78, respectively, indicating good calibration and discriminative power. Conclusions: Prognostic factors affecting swallowing recovery identified in this study can help advance dysphagia research methodologies and the clinical care of stroke patients.