• Herbal Formula Science
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.95-100
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• 2022

Objectives : Recent studies reported that Dokwhalkisaeng-tang (DHJST) could relieve the clinical rheumatoid arthritis (RA) symptoms and the level of RA-related blood test. However, evidence-based review on effectiveness and safety of DHJST with medication on RA was not yet provided. Methods : Searching randomized controlled trials on the use of DHJST for RA will be performed using multiple electronic databases, manual search, and contact to author. Studies will be selected according to the pre-defined criteria and collected data on study participants, interventions, control groups, outcome measurements, the results, adverse events, and risk of bias will be summarized. Primary outcome will be the disease activity score (including effective rate, swollen joint count, tender joint count, and morning stiffness), and the secondary outcomes will be RA-related blood test and adverse events. We will use Review Manager software to perform a meta-analysis, Cochrane Collaboration "risk of bias" tool for assessing the risk of bias, and Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development and Evaluation for the determination of quality of evidence. Results : We are going to investigate the effectiveness and safety of DHJST with medication for RA. Conclusion : This study will provide reliable evidence on whether DHJST combined with medicine is more effective on RA than medicine monotherapy.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.661-670
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was to analyze influential factors for blood transfusion for patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty and total hip arthroplasty, which are chronic degenerative arthritis, using the 2017 sample data of Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service, to research the impact of blood transfusion on the usage of medical services among arthroplasty patients, and ultimately to provide some information on how to offer quality medical services. The findings of the study were as follows: First, whether there were any significant differences in the use or nonuse of transfusion during total knee arthroplasty according to hospital characteristics and patient characteristics was compared. As for significant variables, the type of health care institution, the level of sickbed, gender and anemia were found to have been statistically significantly related. Second. whether there were any significant differences in the use or nonuse of transfusion during total hip arthroplasty according to hospital characteristics and patient characteristics was compared. As for significant variables, the type of health care institution and the level of sickbed were found to have been statistically significantly related. Third, whether there were any significant differences in the presence or absence of diabetes among the total knee arthroplasty patients according to hospital characteristics and patient characteristics was compared. As for significant variables, the type of health care institution, the number of sickbed and anemia were found to have been statistically significantly related. In the case of the total hip arthroplasty patients, there were no variables that were significantly related.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology and Dermatology
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.122-144
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• 2023

Objectives : The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of herbal medicine treatment in patients with cold urticaria. Methods : We searched randomized controlled trials(RCTs) reporting the effects of herbal medicine for cold urticaria through domestic and international databases from their inception to September 2023. The results were summarized in tables. We assessed the risk of bias in included RCTs through Cochrane risk of bias tool and the data synthesis was conducted through RevMan version 5.4. Results : A total of 12 RCTs were included in this review and all trials compared herbal medicine alone treatment(treatment group) with western medicine alone treatment(control group). The total effective rate(TER) of treatment group was statistically higher than that of control group(RR: 1.49, 95% CI: 1.38 to 1.62, p<0.00001, I²=65%). On the other hand, when comparing except for 1 trial with different evaluation period, the TER of treatment group was statistically higher than that of control group and heterogeneity was very low(RR: 1.36, 95% CI: 1.26 to 1.47, p<0.00001, I²=0%). And when comparing 8 trials using the total symptom score(TSS) change index as an indicator of TER, the TER of treatment group was statistically higher than that of control group and heterogeneity was very low(RR: 1.38, 95% CI: 1.26 to 1.51, p<0.00001, I²=0%). The treatment group showed more statistically significant decrease compared to the control group in TSS(MD: -2.51, 95% CI: -2.63 to -2.40, p<0.00001, I²=99%). The relapse rate of treatment group was statistically lower than that of control group(RR: 0.19, 95% CI: 0.10 to 0.40, p<0.00001, I²=0%). Mild adverse events such as sleepiness, dizziness were reported in control group and gastric discomfort was reported in treatment group. In the risk of bias assessment, many cases were evaluated as 'Unclear risk'. Conclusions : This review found that herbal medicine alone treatment could more effective and safe than western medicine alone treatment for cold urticaria. But further well-designed researches are needed because of heterogeneity between trials and the quality of the included trials.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.138-144
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• 2010

Purpose: Despite the rapidly changing healthcare environment, healthcare organizations have recognized the importance of patient safety management. But patient safety management has the problem of the lack of participation of members due to the process of focusing on the follow-up service and punishment. The department of nuclear medicine in Uijeongbu St. Mary's Hospital started this research to reduce the near miss and prevent patient safety accidents by both initiating the participatory near-miss-proof activities as an advance management and constructing a system without disadvantages of reporting. In addition, this research aims to establish a differentiated patient safety management system in the department of nuclear medicine. Materials and Methods: 1. Colleting cases of team members' past and present near miss and accidents(First data collection). 2. Quantifying the cases of near miss and accidents after identifying the degree of importance and urgency through surveys(Second data collection). 3. Quantifying cases and indentifying important points of contact through data analysis. 4. Making and standardizing a manual for important points of contact, and initiating participatory activities to prevent errors. 5. Activating web-based community for establishing the report system of near miss. 6. Estimating the result of before and after activities through surveys and focus group interviews. Results: 1) Quantified safety accidents and near miss in the department of nuclear medicine. About 50 near misses a month and one safety accident a year. 2) Establishing improvement measurements based on quantified data. About 11 participatory activities, the improvement of process, a manual for standardization. 3) Creating a system of safety culture and high participation rate of team members. Constructing a report system, making a check list and a slogan for safety culture, and establishing assessment index. 4) Activating communities for sharing the information of cases of near misses and accidents. 5) As the result of activities, the rate of near miss occurrence declined by 50% and the safety accident did not happen. Conclusion: The best service in the department of nuclear medicine is to provide patients with safety-guaranteed high-quality examination and cure. This research started from the question, 'what is the most faithful-to-the-basics way to provide the best service for patients?' and team members' common answer for this question was building a system with participation of all members. Building a system through the participatory improvement activities for preventing near miss and creating safety culture resulted in the 50% decline of near miss occurrence and no accident. This is a meaningful result from the perspective of advance management for patient safety. Moreover, this research paved the way for creating a culture to report and admit near miss or accidents by establishing a report system with no disadvantage of reporting. The system which sticks to the basics is the best service for patients and will form a patient safety culture system, which will lead to the customer satisfaction. Therefore, all members of the department of nuclear medicine will develop a differentiated patient safety culture with stabilizing the established system.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.129-155
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• 2008

The rate of antibiotics prescription for an acute airway infection significantly varies depending upon the diagnosis type, specialty, and the location of the hospital along with many other related factors. The objective of this study is to empirically investigate the possible relationship between the antibiotics prescription rates for an acute airway infection and the degree of competition in the hospital market regions of mainly the providers of primary medical care services such as clinics, internal medicines, pediatrics and otorhinolaryngology department. Using the data from Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) regarding the hospitals' antibiotics prescription rates for the acute airway infection and controlling for selected variables of demand and supply sectors, this study tries to figure out that the degree of competition in the hospital market, regardless of what type of competition indexes we employed, has a statistically significant effect on the variations of antibiotics prescription rate of the clinics in local areas. This result implies that as an economic consideration itself, the change in the degree of competition in the hospital market can play a crucial role influencing the treatment behaviors of the medical doctors. More specifically, this study reveals that as the degree of competition increases the antibiotics prescription rate goes up. This result means that if the market becomes more competitive in a specific region so that it might cause a reduction in doctor's income, doctors with rational decision-making process, recognize that the benefit created from inducing patients' seemingly unnecessary demand for medical care (income effect) would be higher than the costs associated with sustaining their targeted income (substitution effect). It is because that the doctors are more likely to prescribe antibiotics which create relatively higher margins than other medical care services in order to sustain their targeted income when the hospital market competition becomes tighter. Even though this study empirically confirms that antibiotics prescription can be affected by the economic incentives, it still raises following issues as limitations of the study: first issue is about the representativeness of the hospital regions segregated for this study, which might be weak in explaining whether these regions are mutually exclusive in reality. Patients actually consider the quality of services, transportation cost, time costs, and any other related factors choosing the doctors or hospitals, and in that sense, this study rules out 'border-crossing' in using the medical care services. Second issue arises in capturing the data of antibiotics prescription rate. Since we use the average rate for each medical institution, we cannot figure out the average rate for each patient so that we are not able to control for the variation of patients' medical conditions. It is because of the unavailability of data regarding each patient's medical condition from HIRA. Thirdly, since this study mainly analyzes the medical institutions providing primary care such as clinics, internal medicines, pediatrics, and otorhinolaryngology department, it is skeptical of whether those institutions can represent the hospital market in respective regions and truly reflect the degree of competition. It needs to extend the study areas and disease types as well as any micro data for future studies.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.16-34
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• 2015

Impervious covers(IC) are artificial structures, such as driveways, sidewalks, building's roofs, and parking lots, through which water cannot infiltrate into the soil. IC is an environmental concern because the pavement materials seal the soil surface, decreasing rainwater infiltration and natural groundwater recharge, and consequently disturb the hydrological cycle in a watershed. Increase of IC in a watershed can cause more frequent flooding, higher flood peaks, groundwater drawdown, dry river, and decline of water quality and ecosystem health. There has been an increased public interest in the institutional adoption of LID(Low Impact Development) and GI(Green Infrastructure) techniques to address the adverse impact of IC. The objectives of this study were to construct the modeling site for a samll urban watershed with the Storm Water Management Model(SWMM), and to evaluate the effect of various LID techniques on the control of rainfall runoff processes and non-point pollutant load. The model was calibrated and validated using the field data collected during two flood events on July 17 and August 11, 2009, respectively, and applied to a complex area, where is consist of apartments, school, roads, park, etc. The LID techniques applied to the impervious area were decentralized rainwater management measures such as pervious cover and green roof. The results showed that the increase of perviousness land cover through LID applications decreases the runoff volume and pollutants loading during flood events. In particular, applications of pervious pavement for parking lots and sidewalk, green roof, and their combinations reduced the total volume of runoff by 15~61 % and non-point pollutant loads by TSS 22~72 %, BOD 23~71 %, COD 22~71 %, TN 15~79 %, TP 9~64 % in the study site.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.34-40
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• 2008

Underwater seismic refraction with advanced interpretation approaches makes important contributions to shallow marine exploration and geotechnical investigations in Australia's coastal areas. A series of case studies are presented to demonstrate the recent applications of continuous and static USR methods to river crossing and port infrastructure projects at various sites around Australia. In Sydney, static underwater seismic refraction (USR) with bottom-placed receivers and borehole seismic imaging assisted the development of improved geotechnical models that reduced construction risk for a tunnel crossing of the Lane Cove River. In Melbourne, combining conventional boomer reflection and continuous USR with near-bottom sources and receivers improved the definition of a buried, variably weathered basalt flow and assisted dredging assessment for navigation channel upgrades at Geelong Ports. Sand quality assessment with continuous USR and widely spaced borehole information assisted commercial decisions on available sand resources for the reclamation phase of development at the Port of Brisbane. Buried reefs and indurated layers occur in Australian coastal sediments with the characteristics of laterally limited, high velocity, cap layers within lower velocity materials. If these features are not recognised then significant error in depth determination to deeper refractors can occur. Application of advanced refraction inversion using wavefront eikonal tomography to continuous USR data obtained along the route of a proposed offshore pipeline near Fremantle allowed these layers and the underlying bedrock refractor to be accurately imaged. Static USR and the same interpretation approach was used to image the drowned granitic regolith beneath sediments and indurated layers in the northern area of Western Australia at a proposed new berthing site where deep piling was required. This allowed preferred piling sites to be identified, reducing overall pile lengths. USR can be expected to find increased application to shallow marine exploration and geotechnical investigations in Australia's coastal areas as economic growth continues and improved interpretation methods are developed.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.8-34
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• 2014

We reviewed foreign evaluation systems based on the macrobenthic and macroalgal communities and developed a system, composed of a set of ecological indices able to evaluate the functionality (FI, Functional Index; estimation of stability and productivity) and maturity (MI, Maturity Index; comparisons with biological parameters of natural reefs) of artificial reefs by comparing the status in the adjacent natural reefs in Korean coastal waters. The evaluation system was applied to natural and artificial reefs/reef-planned areas (natural reefs), established in the 5 marine ranching areas (Bangnyeong-Daechung, Yeonpyung, Taean, Seocheon and Buan) in the west coast of Korea. The FI ranged between 31.6 (Bangnyeong-Daechung) and 72.5% (Buan) and MI did between 53.1 (Seocheon) and 76.9% (Taean) in average. The evaluation of artificial reefs by the two indices, showed the most appropriate status in Taean. The FI between the adjacent artificial and natural reefs were in significant linear relationship ($r^2=0.83$, p=0.01). This indicated the local status of biological community may be critical in determining the functionality of the artificial reefs. We have suggested an integrative but preliminary evaluation system of artificial reefs in this study. The output from the evaluation system may be utilized as a tool for environment/resource managers or policy makers, responsible for effective use of funds and decision making. Given the importance, we need to use the options to enhance and improve the accuracy as follows: (1) continuous validation of the evaluation system and rescaling the criteria of indicators, (2) vigorous utilization of observation and experience through the application and data accumulation and (3) development and testing of brand-new indicators.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.324-329
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• 2013

This study investigated and evaluated contamination levels of bacteria on tomatoes at farms stage to evaluate potential hazards associated with fresh tomatoes. A total of 170 samples, 90 samples from 5 sampling sites from 18 farms and 80 samples from 1 sampling site from 4 farms every month for four months, were analyzed to enumerate aerobic bacterial counts, coliforms, E. coli, Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella spp., and Listeria monocytogenes. Aerobic bacterial counts ranged from 0.48 to 6.15 Log CFU/g, with the lowest and the highest bacterial cell counts recorded for A site and E site, respectively. Thirty five percent of the samples from the E site contained more than 2 Log CFU/g. Six samples (6.6%) of 90 samples contained B. cereus less than 1 Log CFU/g. In addition, the contamination level of indicator bacteria and B. cereus in tomatoes were higher on March than on April, May and June (P < 0.05). S. aureus, E. coli, E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella spp. and L. monocytogenes were not detected in the tomato samples. The microbial contamination levels of tomatoes determined in this study may be used as the data for microbiological risk assessment.

• 대한공업교육학회지
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.128-146
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to provide a basic research data for increasing the quality of 'creative engineering design' lesson and the teaching learning capability of high school teachers by analyzing the teaching learning management status and improvement plan of 'technology home economics subject' lesson for high school teachers. In order to investigate the teaching learning management status, the survey questionnaires from 63 teachers were collected from high school teachers who teach technology home economics subject currently and analyzed by statistical program SPSS 20. The main results of this study were as follows: First, for the contents of 'creative engineering design' lesson, the highest mean of response was 'creative thinking method'(M=4.22). In the learning activities, the teachers perceived the importance of the 'idea concept' highly. Second, in the management of 'creative engineering design' lesson, the teachers perceived the importance of the secure of tool, material budget, and practice space for the lesson highly. In the teaching capabilities, the teacher perceived the importance of the preparing teaching learning strategy most($$M{\frac{._-}{.}}4.14$$). Third, the teachers preferred to product for making uncomfortable things better in life and the other production outside from the content of textbook. Fourth, in the ratio of practice:theory lesson, they perceived the ratio of 3:7(36.5%), 4:6(25.4%), and 2:8(23.8%) are appropriate. In the assessment, the combination of production, portfolio, and presentation was preferred most. Fifth, there were statistically significant difference in teachers' interest and satisfaction and contents about 'creative engineering design' lesson between groups divided by the existence of practice space, certification held(technology teacher, non technology teacher), etc. Therefore, in order to improve the interest and satisfaction about the 'creative engineering design' lesson, the secure of space for technology practice and material budget were required. In addition, training and seminars program for improving the teaching capability for 'creative engineering design' lesson were required.