• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2004.11c
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• pp.313-315
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• 2004

Urodynamic study system is widely used for neurogenic bladder patients in various clinical setting. Generally they include 2 pressure sensors from bladder and rectum, and 1 EMG sensor. The rectal pressure catheter is often the source of data error because of gas passage and the fall out of the catheter from anus, and source of discomfort in ambulatory urodynamic system. This study is to design and calibrate the ambulatory digital urodynamic study system that can discard the rectal pressure catheter, which can make patients more comfortable and doctors can get more physiologic data. As a first step, we compared our new system with Dantec $Duet^{(r)}$ urodynamic system (Dantec, Denmark) and wanted to see the possibility of our new system.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.58 no.5
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• pp.448-453
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• 2015

Objective : Recently, the survival of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has been prolonged with improvements in various diagnostic tools and medical treatment modalities. Consequently, spine metastases from HCC are being diagnosed more frequently. The accurate prediction of prognosis plays a critical role in determining a patient's treatment plan, including surgery for patients with spinal metastases of HCC. We investigated the clinical features, surgical outcomes, and prognostic factors of HCC presenting with spine metastases, in patients who underwent surgery. Methods : A retrospective review was conducted on 33 HCC patients who underwent 36 operations (three patients underwent surgical treatment twice) from February 2006 to December 2013. The median age of the patients was 56 years old (range, 28 to 71; male : female=30 : 3). Results : Overall survival was not correlated with age, sex, level of metastases, preoperative Child-Pugh classification, preoperative ambulatory function, preoperative radiotherapy, type of operation, administration of Sorafenib, or the Tokuhashi scoring system. Only the Tomita scoring system was shown to be an independent prognostic factor for overall survival. Comparing the Child-Pugh classification and ambulatory ability, there were no statistically differences between patients pre- and post-operatively. Conclusion : The Tomita scoring system represents a practicable and highly predictive prognostic tool. Even though surgical intervention may not restore ambulatory function, it should be considered to prevent deterioration of the patient's overall condition. Additionally, aggressive management may be needed if there is any ambulatory ability remaining.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2017

The prevalence of diabetes and its related morbidity and mortality are being increased. Despite the advancement of evidence-based pharmacotherapy in the management of diabetes, many patients in our country do not achieve satisfied therapeutic outcomes. Pharmaceutical care service can be defined as a patient-centered clinical service provided by pharmacists to improve therapeutic outcomes and quality of life of patients, by identifying, and preventing or resolving drug-related problems (DRPs). Pharmaceutical care service is interdisciplinary team-based practice, and is provided through collaborative practice agreement (CPA) between one or more physicians and pharmacists. This article describes a model of pharmaceutical care service which can be adopted in our country for patients with diabetes in the ambulatory care settings. With the successful implementation of this service, clinical, economic, and humanistic outcomes of patients will be improved. Therefore, by actively implementing pharmaceutical care service, pharmacist should contribute to the promotion of patients' health and to the advancement of health care delivery system.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.507-513
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• 2008

In this study, we develope an ambulatory ECG acquisition system by implementing a patch-style and wireless electrode. To alleviate the inherent noisy characteristics of the mobile signal, we apply a matched filter and concurrently detect R-peak values. Moreover, the measure for resolving shape distance is computed to estimate the relative similarity between two ECG signals and to decide whether the abnormal characteristics in ECG exist or not.

• Journal of agricultural medicine and community health
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.157-166
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• 2011

Objectives: Anxiety and depression are known to be associated with hypertension, and blood pressure can vary spontaneously throughout the day. The aim of this study was to evaluate anxiety, depression and 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure (24-h ambulatory BP) in employees at their worksite. Methods: A total of 107 volunteers among 136 employees at a hotel in Gyeongju, Korea were enrolled in this study between December 2009 and March 2010. The Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) were used to assess anxiety and depression, respectively. Blood pressure was measured using a 24-h ambulatory BP monitoring system. Results: No significant differences in either BAI or BDI scores were found when hypertensive individuals were compared to normotensive individuals. The frequency of diastolic non-dipper was significantly higher in individuals with depressive symptoms compared to those without (p<0.05). Depression was significantly associated with diastolic non-dipper (OR: 6.85, 95% CI: 1.50-30.01). Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that depression should be considered when deciding upon blood pressure control regimens, and appropriate additive psychotherapy may be beneficial in the treatment of hypertensive patients.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.128-138
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• 2017

Background: The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of differential coinsurance policy on prescription drug coverage of outpatients by types of medical institutions. Methods: In this study, we used a sample cohort database of the National Health Insurance Service and frequency analysis and marginal logistic regression model using generalized estimating equation were used for statistical analysis. Results: The summary on the major research is followed. First, about 16% of patients who used only tertiary or general hospital due to 52 ambulatory care sensitive conditions before policy implementation moved to hospitals and clinics. However, about 57% of them still use tertiary or general hospital. Second, the factors influencing the utilization of hospitals and clinics after the implementation of the policy were gender, age, and income level. As a result, the policy is effective to reduce the medical use of outpatient mental patients in tertiary or general hospital, but the effect is not significant. Conclusion: Therefore, in order to achieve the purpose of the policy for establishing the health care delivery system, it is necessary to adjust the co-payment so as to feel the burden on the co-payment when the outpatient for 52 ambulatory care sensitive conditions is used at the tertiary or general hospital.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.79-93
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• 2005

The purpose of the study is to identify Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions (ACSC) and their potential health insurance applicability in Korea, using the correlation and regression analysis with the empirical data provided by Korean Health Insurance Review Agency(KHIRA). Here, ACSC would be thought of as conditions that when timely and effectively treated in the outpatient medical services can help reduce the risk of hospitalizations. As for ACSC, reducing accessibility for outpatient visit results in increasing hospitalization. In this respect, the ACSC concept is popularly adopted as one of the performance indicators of the national health system. As one of main results, fortifying the accessibility to necessary health care in a way of sharing appropriately the role with private health insurance can lead to the efficiency of national health care delivery systems in view of total health care expense, in particular in a case of ACSC children. Lastly, we would like to strongly suggest that the disease treatment data set reported to KHIRA needs to be opened to private insurance companies only for illness experience investigation.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.1157-1164
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• 2007

In this paper, we implement a PDA(Personal Digital Assistant)-based audiometric system in order to estimate hearing threshold by adopting both pure-tone sound and speech audiometric test system. To estimate a subject's hearing threshold in an ambulatory audiometric test environment, an efficient sound calibration scheme between a PDA and a headphone device is proposed by appling polynomial fitting algorithms in 8-banded frequency ranges.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.48-50
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• 2005

Urodynamics describes a collection of tests designed to evaluate lower urinary tract function and can be performed using retrograde filling of the bladder within a room. In this study, we designed and calibrated the potable urodynamics monitoring system using DSP chip (TMS320VC33, Texas Instrument$^{TM}$, U.S.) and collected pressure and EMG using calibration kit (DPT9022K0122, Medtronics$^{TM}$, U.S.). This system can make patients more comportable and monitor spontaneous urination during daily life.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2003.11c
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• pp.920-923
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• 2003

An wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring system is a widely used non-invasive diagnostic tool for ambulatory patient who may be at risk from latent life-threatening cardiac abnormalities. In this paper, we have a portable ECG monitoring system with conductive fiber which was characterized by the small-size and the low power consumption. The system consists of conductive fibers, one-chip microcontroller, ECG preprocessing circuit, and monitoring software to be able to record and analyze in PC. ECG preprocessing circuit is made of pre-amplifier with gain of 10, band-pass filter with bandwidth of 0.5-120Hz and 2.5V offset circuit for A/D conversion. ECG signals obtained by sensor are included with corrupted noises such as a baseline wandering, 60 Hz power noise and interference noise by body movement. For cancellation corrupted noises in signals obtained by conductive fiber, we used the wavelet decomposition of wavelet transforms in MATLAB toolbox.