This study was conducted to investigate the effects of mugwort extracts on the blood ethanol concentration, liver function and low level of cadmuim(Cd) in rats. The effects of mugwort extracts on the blood ethanol concentration was studied in Sprague-Dawley rats (10 weeks old) administered p.o. with 25% ethanol (5g/1kg body weight) and then injected with mugwort extracts (at the 2% levels of daily feed consumption compared with the concentration of catechins level in mugwort extracts) in caudal vein. SD rats were divided into five groups : control group (CON-E, only ethanol and 0.85% saline sol'n treated instead of each extracts), water extracts of mugwort treated to the control (MDW-E), ethanol extracts of mugwort treated to the control (POH-E). And then rat plasma of each time (0hr, 1hr, 2hr, 3hr) was investigated ethanol concentration by gas chromatography. Another rats were measured at the time of 0 and 5hr for the test of GOD(Glutamic Oxaloacetic Transaminase) and GPT(Glutamic Pyruvic Transaminase). Components of each extracts were analyzed by using high performance liquid chromatography. The effects of mugwort extracts on the liver function were studied in culture of rat hepatocyte composed of three groups : Control group and two groups treated with each extracts (1% & 2% MDW, 1% & 2% MOH). Condition of rat hepatocytes cultured for 36hr at
Along with the development of scientific technologies, health care has been growing remarkably, and as the social life quality improves with increasing interest in health, the demand for medical service is rapidly increasing. However, medical accident and medical dispute also are rapidly increasing due to various factors such as, increasing sense of people's right, lack of understanding in the nature of medical practice, over expectation on medical technique, commercialize medical supply system, moral degeneracy and unawareness of medical jurisprudence by doctors, widespread trend of mutual distrust, and lack of systematized device for solution of medical dispute. This study analysed 30 cases of civil suit in the year between 1994 to 2004, which were selected among the medical dispute cases in dental field with the judgement collected from organizations related to dentistry and department of oral medicine, Yonsei university dental hospital. The following results were drawn from the analyses: 1. The distribution of year showed rapid increase of medical dispute after the year 2000. 2. In the types of medical dispute, suit associated with tooth extraction took 36.7% of all. 3. As for the cause of medical dispute, uncomfortable feeling and dissatisfaction with the treatment showed 36.7%, death and permanent damage showed 16.7% each. 4. Winning the suit, compulsory mediation and recommendation for settlement took 60.0% of judgement result for the plaintiff. 5. For the type of medical organization in relation to medical dispute, 60.0% was found to be the private dental clinics, and 30.0% was university dental hospitals. 6. For the level of trial, dispute that progressed above 2 or 3 trials was of 30.0%. 7. For the amount of claim for damage, the claim amounting between 50 million to 100 million won was of 36.7%, and that of more than 100 million won was 13.3%, and in case of the judgement amount, the amount ranging from 10 million to 30 million won was of 40.0%, and that of more than 100 million won was of 6.7%. 8. For the number of dentist involved in the suit, 26.7% was of 2 or more dentists. 9. For the amount of time spent until the judgement, 46.7% took 11 to 20 months, and 36.7% took 21 to 30 months. 10. For medical malpractice, 46.7% was judged to be guilty, and 70% of the cases had undergone medical judgement or verification of the case by specialists during the process of the suit. 11. In the lost cases of doctors(18 cases), 72.2% was due to violence of carefulness in practice and 16.7% was due to missing of explanation to patient. Medical disputes occurring in the field of dentistry are usually of relatively less risky cases. Hence, the importance of explanation to patient is emphasized, and since the levels of patient satisfaction are subjective, improvement of the relationship between the patient and the dentist and recovery of autonomy within the group dentist are essential in addition to the reduction of technical malpractice. Moreover, management measure against the medical dispute should be set up through complement of the current doctors and hospitals medical malpractice insurance which is being conducted irrationally, and establishment of system in which education as well as consultation for medical disputes lead by the group of dental clinicians and academic scholars are accessible.
Background : The diagnosis of emphysema during life is based on a combination of clinical, functional, and radiographic findings, but this combination is relatively insensitive and nonspecific. The development of rapid, high-resolution third and fourth generation CT scanners has enabled us to resolve pulmonary parenchymal abnormalities with great precision. We compared the chest HRCT findings to the pulmonary function test and arterial blood gas analysis in pulmonary emphysema patients to test the ability of HRCT to quantify the degree of pulmonary emphysema. Methods : From october 1994 to october 1995, the study group consisted of 20 subjects in whom HRCT of the thorax and pulmonary function studies had been obtained at St. Mary's hospital. The analysis was from scans at preselected anatomic levels and incorporated both lungs. On each HRCT slice the lung parenchyma was assessed for two aspects of emphysema: severity and extent. The five levels were graded and scored separately for the left and right lung giving a total of 10 lung fields. A combination of severity and extent gave the degree of emphysema. We compared the HRCT quantitation of emphysema, pulmonary function tests, ABGA, CBC, and patients characteristics(age, sex, height, weight, smoking amounts etc.) in 20 patients. Results : 1) There was a significant inverse correlation between HRCT scores for emphysema and percentage predicted values of DLco(r = -0.68, p < 0.05), DLco/VA(r = -0.49, p < 0.05), FEV1(r = -0.53, p < 0.05), and FVC(r = -0.47, p < 0.05). 2) There was a significant correlation between the HRCT scores and percentage predicted values of TLC(r = 0.50, p < 0.05), RV(r = 0.64, p < 0.05). 3) There was a significant inverse correlation between the HRCT scores and PaO2(r = -0.48, p < 0.05) and significant correlation with D(A-a)O2(r = -0.48, p < 0.05) but no significant correlation between the HRCT scores and PaCO2. 4) There was no significant correlation between the HRCT scores and age, sex, height, weight, smoking amounts in patients, hemoglobin, hematocrit, and wbc counts. Conclusion : High-Resolution CT provides a useful method for early detection and quantitating emphysema in life and correlates significantly with pulmonary function tests and arterial blood gas analysis.
Bacground : Percutaneous needle aspiration biopsy (PCNA) is one of the most frequently used diagnostic methcxJs for intrathoracic lesions. Previous studies have reponed wide range of diagnostic yield from 28 to 98%. However, diagnostic yield has been increased by accumulation of experience, improvement of needle and the image guiding systems. We analysed the results of PCNA performed for one year to evaluate the diagnostic yield, the rate and severity of complications and factors affecting the diagnostic yield. Method : 287 PCNAs undergone in 236 patients from January, 1994 to December, 1994 were analysed retrospectively. The intrathoracic lesions was targeted and aspirated with 21 - 23 G Chiba needle under fluoroscopic guiding system. Occasionally, 19 - 20 G Biopsy gun was used for core tissue specimen. The specimen was requested for microbiologic, cytologic and histopathologic examination in the case of obtained core tissue. Diagnostic yields and complication rate of benign and malignant lesions were ca1culaled based on patients' chans. The comparison for the diagnostic yields according to size and shape of the lesions was analysed with chi square test (p<0.05). Results : There are 19.9% of consolidative lesion and 80.1% of nodular or mass lesion, and the lesion is located at the right upper lobe in 26.3% of cases, the right middle lobe in 6.4%, the right lower lobe 21.2%, the left upper lobe in 16.8%, the left lower lobe in 10.6%, and mediastinum in 1.3%. The lesion distributed over 2 lobes is as many as 17.4% of cases. There are 74 patients with benign lesions, 142 patients with malignant lesions in final diagnosis and confirmative diagnosis was not made in 22 patients despite of all available diagnostic methods. 2 patients have lung cancer and pulmonary tuberculosis concomittantly. Experience with 236 patients showed that PCNA can diagnose benign lesions in 62.2% (42 patients) of patients with such lesions and malignant lesions in 82.4% (117 patients) of patients. For the patients in whom the first PCNA failed to make diagnosis, the procedure was repeated and the cumulative diagnostic yield was increased as 44.6%, 60.8%, 62.2% in benign lesions and as 73.4%, 81.7%, 82.4% in malignant lesions through serial PCNA. Thoracotomy was performed in 9 patients with benign lesions and in 43 patients with malignant lesions. PCNA and thoracotomy showed the same pathologic result in 44.4% (4 patients) of benign lesions and 58.1% (25 patients) of malignant lesions. Thoracotomy confirmed 4 patients with malignat lesions against benign result of PCNA and 2 patients with benign lesions against malignant result of PCNA. There are 1.0% (3 cases) of hemoptysis, 19.2% (55 cases) of blood tinged sputum, 12.5% (36 cases) of pneumothorax and 1.0% (3 cases) of fever through 287 times of PCNA. Hemoptysis and blood tinged sputum didn't need therapy. 8 cases of pneumothorax needed insertion of classical chest tube or pig-tail catheter. Fever subsided within 48 hours in all cases. There was no difference between size and shape of lesion with diagnostic yield. Conclusion: PCNA shows relatively high diagnostic yield and mild degree complications but the accuracy of histologic diagnosis has to be improved.
Recommender system has become one of the most important technologies in e-commerce in these days. The ultimate reason to shop online, for many consumers, is to reduce the efforts for information search and purchase. Recommender system is a key technology to serve these needs. Many of the past studies about recommender systems have been devoted to developing and improving recommendation algorithms and collaborative filtering (CF) is known to be the most successful one. Despite its success, however, CF has several shortcomings such as cold-start, sparsity, gray sheep problems. In order to be able to generate recommendations, ordinary CF algorithms require evaluations or preference information directly from users. For new users who do not have any evaluations or preference information, therefore, CF cannot come up with recommendations (Cold-star problem). As the numbers of products and customers increase, the scale of the data increases exponentially and most of the data cells are empty. This sparse dataset makes computation for recommendation extremely hard (Sparsity problem). Since CF is based on the assumption that there are groups of users sharing common preferences or tastes, CF becomes inaccurate if there are many users with rare and unique tastes (Gray sheep problem). This study proposes a new algorithm that utilizes Social Network Analysis (SNA) techniques to resolve the gray sheep problem. We utilize 'degree centrality' in SNA to identify users with unique preferences (gray sheep). Degree centrality in SNA refers to the number of direct links to and from a node. In a network of users who are connected through common preferences or tastes, those with unique tastes have fewer links to other users (nodes) and they are isolated from other users. Therefore, gray sheep can be identified by calculating degree centrality of each node. We divide the dataset into two, gray sheep and others, based on the degree centrality of the users. Then, different similarity measures and recommendation methods are applied to these two datasets. More detail algorithm is as follows: Step 1: Convert the initial data which is a two-mode network (user to item) into an one-mode network (user to user). Step 2: Calculate degree centrality of each node and separate those nodes having degree centrality values lower than the pre-set threshold. The threshold value is determined by simulations such that the accuracy of CF for the remaining dataset is maximized. Step 3: Ordinary CF algorithm is applied to the remaining dataset. Step 4: Since the separated dataset consist of users with unique tastes, an ordinary CF algorithm cannot generate recommendations for them. A 'popular item' method is used to generate recommendations for these users. The F measures of the two datasets are weighted by the numbers of nodes and summed to be used as the final performance metric. In order to test performance improvement by this new algorithm, an empirical study was conducted using a publically available dataset - the MovieLens data by GroupLens research team. We used 100,000 evaluations by 943 users on 1,682 movies. The proposed algorithm was compared with an ordinary CF algorithm utilizing 'Best-N-neighbors' and 'Cosine' similarity method. The empirical results show that F measure was improved about 11% on average when the proposed algorithm was used