Haider Abbas Mandviwala

Objective: To determine the frequency of COVID-19 in pregnant women and its effects on feto-maternal outcomes at a tertiary care hospital. Methods: Present cross-sectional study was conducted at the department of gynae and OBS, at Ziauddin University and Hospital Karachi, from April, 2020 to August 2020. All the pregnant women at term who were admitted for delivery in maternity unit, aged more than 18 years old, and of either parity, were included. After taking written and verbal informed consent women were offered to be tested for SARS-COV2 via Nasopharyngeal PCR swab test. Those women who tested positive for the COVID-19 test were treated according to the severity of the symptoms, and asymptomatic and clinically sound patients were shifted to isolation rooms. Women who presented in spontaneous labour were treated as SARS COV2 positive for safety purposes. SPSS version 22 was used to perform the analysis, all of the data. Results: A total of 454 pregnant females were tested for SARS-CoV2 via a nasopharyngeal PCR swab test, and 12 (3%) women tested positive. Out of the 12 women testing positive, 4 were preterm births, and no significant association was found between COVID PCR being positive (p=0.00) and preterm birth (p=0.112). Five out of 12 women testing positive had an episode(s) of leaking. There was a strong association between COVID PCR being positive and episodes of leaking (p=0.001). Three out of 12 women testing positive had fetal distress, while 19 out of 454 women testing negative had fetal distress (p=0.004). There were no cases of APH or PPH reported in women testing positive; however, out of 442 women testing negative, 1 APH and 3 PPH were reported. There was no mortality in either of the patients, mother or neonate. Conclusion: As per the study conclusion, the frequency of COVID-19 among women during pregnancy was observed to be only 3%, which was significantly linked to the pneumonia, leaking, and fetal distress. Keywords: Covid-19, pregnancy, complications, mortality

Background: In the 1970’s the introduction of Fine Need Aspiration Cytology (FNAC) proved to be the key method for examining the nature and malignant potential of many palpable lesions like thyroid, salivary glands and lymphadenopathies. Breast pathologies is one of the entity that can also be diagnosed with FNAC. Breast cancer is the most common malignancy of women with overall 100,000 cases being reported annually around the globe. The most frequent lesion encountered using FNAC in breast is fibro-adenoma followed by fibrocystic disease, breast abscess, chronic inflammatory conditions and suspicious malignant masses. In current cross sectional study we tried to find frequency of different breast lesions by FNAC. Methodology and Results: 649 samples were recruited from the Vital Laboratory Larkana with different pathological lesions of breast during the year 2014 and 2015 by non-probability consecutive sampling. 613 (95%) were females and 32 (5%) were male with mean age of 30.8±12.8 years. Majority of case were of 20-39 years of age (55.8%). Most of the cases were diagnosed with benign lesions (329, 51%) followed by inflammatory lesions (132, 20.5%) and gynecomastia (15, 2.3%). Right breast was more affected (329, 51%). In present study we found a strong association of diagnosis with gender (p =0.000) and age (p =0.000). Conclusion: So in this study it is concluded that large number of females with breast pathologies present with benign lesions like fibro-adenoma at the age of 20-39 years. It is also concluded that in this age group mastitis and abscesses are common due to different risk factors.