Jovis Johny

A 7-year-old boy presented to the orthopaedics outpatient department with a swelling of his left knee, which had been first been noticed a year ago, and had been progressively growing since. This was associated with occasional pain, tenderness and restriction of range of movement. There was no

A 40-year-old man presented to urology with progressive painless right hemiscrotal swelling of 1 month with no fever, trauma, weight loss or hernia. Local examination revealed right hemiscrotal swelling with hydrocele. Routine blood investigations were within normal limits, total count—6300

Abstract Background The coronavirus disease (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and first reported in December 2019 at Wuhan, China, has since then progressed into an ongoing global pandemic. The primary organ targeted by the virus is the pulmonary system, leading to interstitial pneumonia and subsequent oxygen dependency and morbidity. Computed tomography (CT) has been used by various centers as an imaging modality for the assessment of severity of lung involvement in individuals. Two popular systems of scoring lung involvement on CT are CT semiquantitative score (SQ) and CT severity score (CT-SS), both of which assess extent of pulmonary involvement by interstitial pneumonia and are partly based upon subjective evaluation. Our cross-sectional observational study aims to assess the interobserver reliability of these scores, as well as to assess the statistical correlation between the respective CT scores to severity of clinical outcome. Results Both the SQ and CT-SS scores showed an excellent interobserver reliability (ICC 0.91 and 0.93, respectively, p < 0.05). The CT-SS was marginally more sensitive (99.2%) in detecting severe COVID pneumonia than SQ (86.5%). The positive predictive value of SQ (98.3%) is more than CT-SS (78%) for detecting severe disease. The similarity of interobserver reliability obtained for both scores reiterates the respective cutoff CT scores proposed by the above systems, as 18 for SQ and 19.5 for CT-SS. Conclusion Both the SQ and CT-SS scores display excellent interobserver reliability. The CT-SS was more sensitive in detecting severe COVID pneumonia and may thus be preferred over the SQ as an initial radiological tool in predicting severity of infection.

A 50-year-old female patient presented to the emergency room with intermittent fever and bilateral upper/lower limb weakness for 2 weeks and intermittent abdominal pain for 1 week. On general examination there were features of hypotension, tachypnoea and pallor. On nervous system examination there