Publications by authors named "S A Iftikhar"

Background/objectives: Full immunization coverage in Pakistan remains suboptimal at 66%. An in-depth assessment is needed to understand the long-term trends in immunization and identify the extent of defaulters and associated risk factors of them being left uncovered by the immunization system.

Methods: We conducted a 5-year analysis using the Government's Provincial Electronic Immunization Registry data for the 2018-2023 birth cohorts in Sindh province.

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Phosphate (PO(III)) contamination in water bodies poses significant environmental challenges, necessitating efficient and accurate methods to predict and optimize its removal. The current study addresses this issue by predicting the adsorption capacity of PO(III) ions onto biochar-based materials using five probabilistic machine learning models: eXtreme Gradient Boosting LSS (XGBoostLSS), Natural Gradient Boosting, Bayesian Neural Networks (NN), Probabilistic NN, and Monte-Carlo Dropout NN. Utilizing a dataset of 2952 data points with 16 inputs, XGBoostLSS demonstrated the highest R (0.

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Background: Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) (C1) is a disease with multi-organ involvement that can have a variety of cutaneous manifestations in 76% of cases during the disease. Less than 1% of these patients are diagnosed with confirmed bullous systemic lupus erythematosus (C1). Given the wide differential diagnosis of a bullous lesion, it is imperative to reach a conclusive diagnosis as it can have a direct impact on the course of management of the disease.

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Background: An inflammation of the nasal and paranasal sinus mucosa that lasts longer than three months is known as chronic rhinosinusitis. When corticosteroids and other medicinal treatments fail to relieve a patient's symptoms, then functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS) is a commonly performed procedure to alleviate the symptoms. The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of oral steroids given prior to surgery on intraoperative bleeding in patients having functional endoscopic sinus surgery for chronic rhinosinusitis.

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Purpose: The purpose of this study is to systematically review the literature to evaluate the diagnostic methods, associated defects, treatment approaches, and outcomes of congenital perineal hernia.

Methods & Results: We searched PubMed and Google Scholar from inception until January 7, 2024, to find relevant articles on congenital perineal hernia. A total of 87 articles were obtained which were screened based on eligibility criteria yielding a total of 12 documented cases that were summarized in a table.

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