Publications by authors named "Sama Mukhtar"

Background: Understanding the epidemiological patterns of febrile infants can offer valuable insights for optimising management strategies and developing quality improvement initiatives, aiming to improve healthcare delivery in high-volume, low-resource emergency departments (EDs).

Objectives: To characterise the epidemiology of febrile infants presenting to the paediatric ED of a tertiary care hospital.

Methods: A retrospective chart review of medical records was performed for febrile infants ≤1 year old, at paediatric ED, Indus Hospital and Health Network (IHHN), Karachi, Pakistan (1 January 2020-31 December 2020).

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Background: Cultural sensitivity (CS) training is vital to pediatric emergency medicine (PEM) curricula. This study aimed to explore CS in Yale PEM fellows and emergency medicine (EM) residents at Indus Hospital and Health Network (IHHN) in Pakistan through distance simulation activities.

Methods: This mixed-methods analysis of an educational intervention was conducted at Yale University in collaboration with IHHN.

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Introduction: A quasi-experimental study was conducted to estimate the impact of sequential emergency department (ED) capacity building interventions on key performance indicators such as patients' length of stay (LOS) and wait time (WT) during the COVID-19 pandemic. This was achieved through augmenting personnel education and head count, space restructuring and workflow reorganisation.

Setting And Participants: This study included 268 352 patients presenting from January 2019 to December 2020 at Indus Hospital and Health network Karachi, a philanthropic tertiary healthcare facility in a city of 20 million residents.

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Introduction: An enhanced knowledge of Emergency Medicine (EM) personnel regarding negative Social Determinants of Health (SDH) can impact EM service provision in a resource limited country like Pakistan. Interventions to build capacity in identifying and addressing these SDH through education in Social Emergency Medicine (SEM) can be one of the ways in which EM key performance indicators (KPIs) can be improved.

Method: A SEM based curriculum was administered to the EM residents at a tertiary care center in Karachi, Pakistan.

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Background: Most Emergency Departments (EDs) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly in Pakistan, are staffed by physicians not formally trained in Emergency Medicine (EM). As of January 2022, there were only 13 residency training programs in EM throughout all of Pakistan. Therefore, an intermediate solution-a one-year training program in EM-was developed to build capacity.

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Objectives: Patient risk stratification is the cornerstone of COVID-19 disease management; that has impacted health systems globally. We evaluated the performance of the Brescia-COVID Respiratory Severity Scale (BCRSS), CALL (Co-morbid, age, Lymphocyte and Lactate dehydrogenase) Score, and World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines in Emergency department (ED) on arrival, as predictors of outcomes; Intensive care unit (ICU) admission and in-hospital mortality.

Methods: A two-month retrospective chart review of 88 adult patients with confirmed COVID-19 pneumonia; requiring emergency management was conducted at ED, Indus Hospital and Health Network (IHHN), Karachi, Pakistan, (April 1 to May 31, 2020).

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Background: Moving away from invasive ventilation towards timed position change and non-invasive ventilation is especially of benefit in low and middle income countries, where judicious use of the available healthcare resources is the need of the day. Our study was conducted prospectively to develop strategies for non-invasive ventilation in combination with timed position change of patients to see its impact on their outcome.

Objectives: Non-invasive ventilation has proven to be of benefit in COVID-19 related acute lung injury.

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Background & Objective: Understanding the demographics of mortality and its burden in the emergency department of a tertiary care setup can lead to better planning and allocation of resources to streamline process flow. This can be achieved systematically through mortality audit that can identify the loopholes and areas of improvement. Our objective was to characterize the epidemiology of ED mortality in a tertiary care hospital of Karachi, Pakistan.

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