Qatar Medical Journal - Volume 2010, Issue 2

Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Jabir Ibn Sinan Al Battani Al Harrani was born around 858 CE in Harran, and according to one account, in Battan, a State of Harran. Battani was first educated by his father Jabir Ibn San'an Al Battani, who was also a well-known scientist. He then moved to Raqqa, situated on the bank of the Euphrates, where he received advanced education and later on flourished as a scholar. At the beginning of the 9th century, h Read More

Qatar Medical Journal is the official periodical of the medical community in Qatar. Papers considered for publication in Qatar Medical Journal are those reporting original work, review articles and case reports that are particularly relevant to medicine in the broad sense. Editorials and Review articles are by invitation.

With the ultimate goal of improving medical care for diabetes, a study of four Primary Healthcare Centers (PHC) surveyed the composition of PHC population, completeness of patient data, changes in biochemical variables two years before and after establishing specialized diabetic clinics. Patients with diabetes of less than four years duration were excluded from the study. Most (71.7%) of 403 patients with Type II diabetes were aged 40 Read More

Using a modified standard questionnaire a crosssectional study was conducted between October and December 2006 to assess knowledge, attitude and practices towards food safety measures among 43 randomly selected food service staff at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), Qatar. Knowledge, attitude and practice of food service staff towards food safety was 91.9 %, 86% and 89.7 % respectively. Many (95.3%) recognized the import Read More

To define the demographic, clinical and laboratory features, methods of diagnosis and outcome, in patients with meningococcal meningitis in Qatar, records were reviewed retrospectively to 25 patients (21 male, 4 female; mean age 24 years) treated for meningococcal meningitis at the Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) between 1992 and 2008). Most (88%) were expatriates. The most common presenting symptoms were fever, vo Read More

Despite the emergence of therapeutic advances, the morbidity and mortality still occur in the obstetric patients, although intensive care utilization by obstetric and gynecological patient, are still rare compared to the general population. Majority of obstetric patients needed the intensive care therapy compared to gynecological patients. The aim of our study was to know the indications for the intensive care admission by obstetric and gyne Read More

To enhance the quality of patient care, Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) has previously adopted guidelines for the management of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) based upon the PSI model. We audited retrospectively the management of CAP inpatients admitted to Hamad General Hospital from 1 January until 31 June, 2008 with the objective of establishing whether these HMC guidelines were being implemented appropr Read More

To analyze the epidemiological and clinical characteristic of a measles outbreak in Qatar in 2007, the records of 21 2 confirmed cases of measles were analyzed retrospectively, confirmation being based on clinical suspicion of the disease with a positive measles IgM (170 cases) and /or exposure to a laboratory confirmed measles case during the infectious period (42 cases; epidemiologic link). Eighty five percent of the cases occurred betw Read More

A prospective cohort study of 18 males aged 19–45 years with chronic renal failure attending the Ibn Sina Teaching Hospital, Mosul for Hemodialysis (HD) between March 2007 and March 2008 assessed the oxidative stress, antioxidant status, serum urea and serum creatinine before and after hemodialysis and following subsequent supplementation with oral Vitamin E. Blood samples collected before starting hemodialysis, after three weeks of twi Read More

Background: Cigarette smoking is universally acknowledged to be a health hazard. Primary care physicians have several important responsibilities, being role models, information providers, and identifiers/modifiers of risk behaviors, and researchers. They are often able to influence the behavior of their own patients as well as the society as a whole in the prevention of illness and promotion of well-being. This can be accomplished by both serv Read More

A prospective study over six months (from 1 July to 31 December 2002) measured the level of blood lead in individuals attending Primary Health Centers in the center District of Basrah Governorate. Six hundred and two individuals were selected randomly from those attending seventeen Primary Health Centers in the center of Basrah. Their ages ranged from 9-79 years. Of 602, Twenty six, 15 years of age or younger had mean blood lead lev Read More

Apexification is the standard procedure for the management of immature non-vital teeth. This report presents a case of a traumatic injury to a maxillary central incisor that lead to total pulp necrosis and a large periapical lesion. Calcium hydroxide apexification was used successfully in the treatment of this case.

Evaluation of the visual fields is an integral part of diagnosing and following-up any patient with suspected glaucoma. If any progressive loss in the visual field is noted the treatment plan may need alteration to suit the clinical circumstances but if the follow-up visual field changes are atypical then other ocular or systemic pathologies need to be excluded before changing the glaucoma management plan. We present an unusual case of brain Read More

Proper post-extubation pain control in traumatic blunt chest injury represents a challenge to provide adequate analgesia for proper lung inflation and to prevent re-intubation. In this case, the average opioid (Remifentanil) infusion drip in a traumatic blunt chest injury patient in the 48 hours prior to extubation was calculated and converted to the equivalent analgesic one of the Fentanyl Transdermal Therapeutic System (Fentanyl TTS Patc Read More

Myelin sheath tumors are neurogenic tumors which include schwannoma, neurofibroma, neurofibromatosis and neurogenic sarcoma. They are most commonly present during middle age and 90% are benign. It has been reported that, they are twice as common in women as in men, but there are few reports of neurogenic tumors in the biliary tract and fewer than 10 cases of schwannoma of the extrabiliary tract.

Mesenteric cysts are uncommon and mesenteric chylous cysts are extremely rare. The most common presenting symptoms are abdominal pain and abdominal distention. We report two cases of mesenteric chylous cyst in a young man and a young woman. Pre-operative, intra-operative and histological findings are discussed.