Institutional Review Board, CMC Vellore (IRB Min No. 9630 [OBSERVE] dated 23.09.2015). All statistical analyses were done in SPSS v. 16.0 RESULTS: The participants were enrolled in the study after obtaining written informed consent. Pilot study data showed that the questionnaire was able to test the awareness, certainty, most and least likely choices of specialty, factors affecting specialty choice, when medical students form specialty choice and their inclination towards serving in rural areas. A Cronbach’s alpha value > 0.7 was obtained when different factors were clustered and tested for inter-correlation between items. CONCLUSION: We have developed and validated an instrument which can reliably assess various aspects related to specialty choice among Indian medical students. We hope that this tool can be used to study the changing trends in the preferences of medical students and the factors that underlie their choice of specialty.
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Scrub typhus infection- role of WDF cell population data and scatterplots of Sysmex XN®9000 analyser in its identification and separation from other similar illnesses Ananthvikas Jayaram1, Sukesh Nair2, Joy Mammen2, Nitty Mathews2, Tulasi Geevar2, John Anthony Jude Prakash3, Valsan P Verghese4, Winsley Rose4, Alice Mathuram5, Karthik G5, Josephine2, Philip Jesuraj2 Departments of 1Pathology, 2Transfusion medicine and Immunohaematology, 3Microbiology, 4 Child Health Unit 3 and 5Medicine, Christian Medical College, Vellore INTRODUCTION: Scrub typhus is an under-recognized and emerging zoonosis, with infection causing changes in the WBCs that reflect on the cell counter WBC differential (WDF) scattergrams. Bacterial infections usually result in increased neutrophil side fluorescence (SFL) and decreased forward scatter (FSC) indicating left shift. Viral infections invariably cause variations in the High Fluorescent Lymphocyte Cell population (HFLC%). In cases of scrub typhus, both these phenomena were observed in our routine workflow. This study aimed to assess the utility of these parameters in combination to differentiate scrub typhus from the others. METHODS:EDTA blood samples from 99 cases and 83 age matched controls (141 and 93 blood samples respectively) were analysed in the CBC+Differential mode on a Sysmex XN®9000 platform with calibration, linearity and carry over tests verified and daily quality control checks performed. Clinical suspicion of scrub typhus and serologic positivity by IgM ELISA defined cases of scrub typhus. The routine and research parameters and WDF scattergram patterns from the cell counter were analysed. Samples from 449 healthy voluntary blood donors served to calculate the reference ranges. RESULTS: Scattergrams in scrub typhus revealed an increased height of the lymphocyte plot
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7th Annual Research Day