Paediatr Int Child Health
August 2013
Background: Operation Smile is a non-profit organization that provides free cleft lip and cleft palate repair to impoverished children worldwide. To date, no longitudinal studies of satisfaction among these patients or their families have been published.
Objectives: In a cohort of parents of children receiving cleft lip/cleft palate repair, to assess parental satisfaction and fulfillment of expectations.
Background: The clinical significance of anti-Trypanosoma cruzi low-level reactive samples is incompletely understood. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-positive rates and antibody levels among seropositive blood donors in three countries are described.
Study Design And Methods: Follow-up samples were collected from T.
Background: Evaluation of commercially available test kits for Chagas disease for use in blood bank screening is difficult due to a lack of large and well-characterized specimen panels. This study presents a collaborative effort of Latin American blood centers and the World Health Organization (WHO) to establish such a panel.
Study Design: A total of 437 specimens, from 10 countries were collected and sent to the WHO Collaborating Center in São Paulo and used to evaluate 19 screening assays during 2001 through 2005.
Background: Dengue fever and hemorrhagic disease are caused by four dengue virus (DENV) serotypes (DENV-1 to -4), mosquito-borne flaviviruses with increasing incidence, and expanding global distributions. Documented transfusion transmission of West Nile virus raised concern regarding transfusion-transmitted DENV.
Methods: A DENV RNA assay was developed based on transcription-mediated amplification (TMA) blood screening assays routinely used by blood centers worldwide.
J Clin Virol
December 2005
Background: Monitoring infectivity markers in multi-transfused patients is an important indicator of the efficiency and quality of testing in blood centers. This study is part of a regional initiative to bring both national and regional attention to the problem of hepatitis C, compare the threat of HCV to that of HBV and HIV; assess the risks for viral infection of using different blood products and implementing different transfusion practices, and contribute to a better understanding of the state of blood safety in the region.
Study Design And Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted from September 2002 to August 2003 and included multi-transfused patients from eight private, public and Social Security hospitals from Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
In this study we compared the performance of the Chagas Stat-Pak rapid immunochromatographic test with a standard enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in the serodiagnosis of Chagas' disease in Central America. Out of 3,400 blood donor samples, 156 (4.6%) were positive in both assays.
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