Department Medical Education

Objective: Diabetic retinopathy is one of the leading causes of blindness that occurs secondary to diabetesmellitus. Besides having serious effects on the retina, diabetes has also been found to affect the hearing sense.The aim of our study was to identify any correlation of hearing impairment with diabetic retinopathy in patientssuffering from Type 2 diabetes mellitus.Study Design: A Retrospective study.Place and Duration of Study: The study was carried out at the outpatient Otorhinolaryngology andOphthalmology clinics of Mohsin Family Health Clinic, Federal B Area of Karachi, Pakistan, from July 2016 toJune 2019.Materials and Methods: Retrospective data analysis was performed using non-probability purposive sampling.The demographic data, diabetic retinopathy and Hearing status were collected and analyzed using SPSS 20.0 inpatients suffering from type 2 diabetes mellitus.Results: The mean age of patients was 60.65±7.35 and the duration of diabetes was 6.76±3.52. Diabeticretinopathy...

Vitamin D is identifi ed to have an important association with diabetic retinopathy (DR). Several vitro and vivo studies support this evidence. Diabetic retinopathy is identifi ed as one of the leading causes of blindness. Diabetic retinopathy poses economic and social
implications. Visual loss secondary to diabetic retinopathy is avoidable and/or treatable with
timely intervention. Diff erent risk factors have been identifi ed for causing diabetic retinopathy. Recently, vitamin-D is also identifi ed as a risk factor for diabetic retinopathy in patients
suff ering from diabetes mellitus type-II. Large number of studies has identifi ed vitamin D defi ciency in diff erent countries aff ecting all ages. Where several studies have found correlation
of vitamin-D defi ciency with diabetic retinopathy, some studies have found no relationship
between vitamin-D defi ciency and diabetic retinopathy.

Objective: To identify the preferred learning style of fi rst year medical students at Karachi Medical and Dental College, Karachi. Material and Methods:A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted amongst fi rst year medical students of Karachi Medical & Dental College, Karachi. VARK questionnaire was used to determine the learning style.Ethical approval was granted by the ethical committ ee of KMDC. Results:A total of 210 students participated in study. Completed questionnaire were returned by 199 students with response rate of 94.7%. Majority of study group comprised of women 86.94%(173) while men accounted for 13.06%(26). Male to female ratio was 1:6.65. Most preferred individual VARK learning style was kinesthetic(95.47%) followed by auditory(80.40%), visual(70.85%) and reading/writing(57.28%). Multi-modal learning style was preferred by 98.5% with Tri-modal as the most preferred combination comprising of 51.26% followed by Quad-modal 27.14% and Bi-modal 20.10%. Most prevalent Tri-modal combination among study group was KA V (Kinesthetic-Auditory-Visual) with frequency of 50.98%. Uni-modal was the least preferred style of learning comprising of 1.5%. No statistically significant diff erence of learning style was found between men and women (p=0.195). Kinesthetic was found to be the most preferred individual VARK style with mean score of 6.51±2.47. Conclusion: Majority of medical students irrespective of gender prefer to learn through using all sensory modalities. Bett er understanding of learning characteristics of students necessitates modifi cations in teaching strategies. Using multisensory approach of teaching through use of active learning strategies helps in bett er understanding and eff ective learning to take place.