BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to develop a specific instrument for measuring health-related quality of life (HRQL) in patients receiving home mechanical ventilation (HMV). METHODS The Severe Respiratory Insufficiency (SRI) Questionnaire was developed and tested for its psychometric properties following a multicentric clinical trial including 226 patients receiving H...

PURPOSE This was a prospective case-control study conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the Tear Stability Analysis System (TSAS) for the assessment of patients with dry eye. METHODS The TSAS can take 10 consecutive corneal topograms at one per second for 10 seconds. Examinations using the TSAS were conducted in 26 eyes of 26 healthy control subjects and in 27 eyes of 27 patients with dr...

Due to the high demand for pest control in Sri Lankas’ rice paddy cultivation practices, the number of new pesticides has been recently introduced. However, the new pesticides, which are flowing into the agriculture sector of Sri Lanka, appeared to be used by farmers without obtaining proper application guidance from the suppliers or from extension services. As a result, the exposure to harmful...

Nihal Perera is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at Ball State University. He has been Chief Architect-Planner for the Mahaweli Development Project, Sri Lanka, and Regional and Physical Planning Consultant for the Transmigration Project, Indonesia. His most recent publication is Society and Space: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Postcolonial Identity in Sri Lanka (Westview,/998). The colo...

One hundred forty-three cases of rhinosporidiosis, confirmed by smear or biopsy, treated in two major General Hospitals in Sri Lanka over a 14 year period (1995-2009) were analyzed in regard to their epidemiological, clinical, clinicopathological, immunological and microbiological features. Regional variations in incidence, age and sex distribution, bathing history, and histopathology were seen...

Virion RNAs of 12 geographically distinct dengue type 1 (DEN-1) virus isolates were clearly unique by RNA fingerprinting. Isolates from the same geographic area were very similar but differed from those of other areas, allowing us to establish three geographical groupings based upon percent shared oligonucleotides. Three Caribbean strains were virtually identical (85-91% homologous oligonucleot...

www.thelancet.com Vol 374 July 11, 2009 117 Sri Lanka’s brutal, three-decadelong war has come to an end. Although very timely, your May 16 World Report contains some points that are biased and incorrect, and will certainly tarnish the image of Sri Lanka. First, the main reason for the military operations continuing during the country’s biggest festival was to rescue the innocent civilians kept ...

To test the hypothesis that PAF partially mediates endotoxin-induced lung dysfunction, we studied the effects of two structurally dissimilar PAF receptor antagonists (SRI 63-441 and WEB 2086) on endotoxin-induced lung dysfunction in chronically instrumented awake sheep. Each animal was studied three times in varied order: infusion of endotoxin alone (Escherichia coli endotoxin 0.5 micrograms/kg...

BACKGROUND International guidelines on research have focused on protecting research participants. Ethical Research Committee (ERC) approval and informed consent are the cornerstones. Externally sponsored research requires approval through ethical review in both the host and the sponsoring country. This study aimed to determine to what extent ERC approval and informed consent procedures are docu...

Four rare human cases of primary ocular rhinosporidiosis with staphyloma formation in Sri Lanka are described. Cases 1, 3, and 4 were the first reported cases of ocular rhinosporidiosis, with a river contaminated with the causative organism Rhinosporidium seeberi as the probable source of infection. A contaminated lake was the probably source in case 2. Their unusual features included serial rh...