• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.57 no.6
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• pp.535-542
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• 2004

Background : Despite the clinical clues of bronchial asthma, some chronic coughers fail to be diagnosed due to negative test results. This study was aimed at evaluating the diagnostic performance of routine objective tests and identifying a cost-effective approach for asthmatics with a chronic cough. Methods : Patients with a chronic cough of more than 3 weeks duration, and showing normal chest radiograph and spirometry were enrolled. On the first visit, objective tests, composed of serum total IgE, peripheral blood eosinophil count, spontaneous sputum eosinophil count, methacholine bronchial provocation test (MBPT) and paranasal sinus radiograph, were performed, with the simultaneous administration of oral prednisolone (0.5mg/kg) for one week. The final diagnoses were made on the basis of the test results, and the patients grouped according to their steroid responsiveness. The role of the etiologic diagnosis tests was evaluated, and the medical costs of the final management plan simulated with respect to three assumed models. Results : Sixty chronic coughers were finally analyzed. The final diagnoses were as follows: bronchial asthma 21.7%, eosinophilic bronchitis 6.7%, paranasal sinusitis 18.3%, presumptive allergy 8.3% and non-diagnostic case 45.0%. Ninety percent were steroid responder. With the bronchial asthma cases, the positive rate of MBPT was 38.5%, with sputum eosinophil count in 84.6%, serum total IgE in 38.5%, and a peripheral blood eosinophil count rate of 30.8%. When the test results and steroid responsiveness data were applied to the 3 models, the chest radiograph, spirometry, sputum eosinophil count and paranasal sinus radiograph test results, and simultaneous short term steroid treatment seemed to have acceptable diagnostic performances, which could be used as a further guide to cost-effective planning. Conclusion : Objective tests, composed of chest radiograph, spirometry, paranasal sinus radiograph and sputum eosinophil count, with simultaneous short term steroid treatment, are suggested as cost-effective approaches for asthmatics with a chronic cough.

• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.199-212
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• 2001

This research, aiming at analyzing the Emergency Medical Technicians' duties prior to establishing a baseline for question development in the national exams to qualify for the EMTs, investigated the importance and frequency per unit specified in the description with the EMTs to be subjects working on the task spot by means of questionnaires. The EMT duties were classified into 9 items like 1) the notification and response, 2) the scene size-up, 3) the patient assessment, 4) the emergency care, 5) the patient transport, 6) the duties at hospital clinics, 7) the operational management, 8) the receiving and responding to a call, 9) the self-development, and put the functional tasks into 52 items, describing the task elements into 177 items, and then questioned 112 EMTs working on the spot from July 21 through August 30, 2000, which showed the following results. 1) The distribution of subjects' career showed the highest rate with 33.9% for those who careered "less than a year", only 13.4% for those with more than 4 years and the highest rate with 43.8% for those who aged at 20-25. And 70.5% of all those who were questioned was the junior college graduates, 58.9% for those working at fire station and 29.5% working at hospital clinics. 2) Looking at the distribution of frequency and importance for each task element, questioning 'the patients main symptoms', 'accidental type', 'place of the patients identification' showed the highest rate in both frequency and importance in the field of "notification and response". 3) In the "scene size-up", identifying the patients showed the highest rate of frequency and importance, compared to other field of tasks, among which "identifying the patients' state" showed the highest rate of frequency (2.66) and importance (2.81). 4) In the "patient assessment", "identifying the patients" showed the high rate of frequency and importance in most elements of task, especially the importance showed the highest rate with 2.83 for the task of airway management and the cervical immobilization during "the primary assessment", and the frequency showed the highest rate for questioning the past case of the task of grasping the patients' history. 5) In the "emergency care", "the management of the heart attacked patients" and "the advanced cardiac life support" showed a high rate in the importance, whereas the frequency showed a very low rate. The high rate of frequency during the emergent task was the management of "musculoskeletal system injury patients" and of "the gastro-intestinal and urinary genital system injury patient support." In care of the patients with heart attack, the management of the airway showed the highest rate with 2.95, whereas the management of alcoholic abused patients and of dying patients, showed comparatively lower rate of assessment in the importance. The frequency of tasks showed the highest rate with 2.69 in the control of bleeding and the lowest with 0.47 in the management of abnormal delivery of child. 6) As to the patient transport, "the emergency transport" showed the highest rate with 2.74 and the unemergent transport with 2.55 in the importance, and the task importance at hospital showed the highest rate with 2.89 in managing the cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and with 2.60 in identifying the patient state. 7) Of all the tasks related with "operational task", the high importance was to "educate for the management of the first responder", but the frequency of tasks mostly showed a low rate and "receiving and responding to a call" showed relatively a high rate of importance and frequency. And related with "the self-development", "the health care management" and "the stress control" on working spot showed a high rate, but the frequency mostly showed a low rate.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.49-65
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• 2014

Word of Mouth (WOM) is a behavior used by consumers to transfer or communicate their product or service experience to other consumers. Due to the popularity of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and online communities, electronic WOM (e-WOM) has become important to the success of products or services. As a result, most enterprises pay close attention to e-WOM for their products or services. This is especially important for movies, as these are experiential products. This paper aims to identify the network factors of an online movie community that impact box office revenue using social network analysis. In addition to traditional WOM factors (volume and valence of WOM), network centrality measures of the online community are included as influential factors in box office revenue. Based on previous research results, we develop five hypotheses on the relationships between potential influential factors (WOM volume, WOM valence, degree centrality, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality) and box office revenue. The first hypothesis is that the accumulated volume of WOM in online product communities is positively related to the total revenue of movies. The second hypothesis is that the accumulated valence of WOM in online product communities is positively related to the total revenue of movies. The third hypothesis is that the average of degree centralities of reviewers in online product communities is positively related to the total revenue of movies. The fourth hypothesis is that the average of betweenness centralities of reviewers in online product communities is positively related to the total revenue of movies. The fifth hypothesis is that the average of betweenness centralities of reviewers in online product communities is positively related to the total revenue of movies. To verify our research model, we collect movie review data from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), which is a representative online movie community, and movie revenue data from the Box-Office-Mojo website. The movies in this analysis include weekly top-10 movies from September 1, 2012, to September 1, 2013, with in total. We collect movie metadata such as screening periods and user ratings; and community data in IMDb including reviewer identification, review content, review times, responder identification, reply content, reply times, and reply relationships. For the same period, the revenue data from Box-Office-Mojo is collected on a weekly basis. Movie community networks are constructed based on reply relationships between reviewers. Using a social network analysis tool, NodeXL, we calculate the averages of three centralities including degree, betweenness, and closeness centrality for each movie. Correlation analysis of focal variables and the dependent variable (final revenue) shows that three centrality measures are highly correlated, prompting us to perform multiple regressions separately with each centrality measure. Consistent with previous research results, our regression analysis results show that the volume and valence of WOM are positively related to the final box office revenue of movies. Moreover, the averages of betweenness centralities from initial community networks impact the final movie revenues. However, both of the averages of degree centralities and closeness centralities do not influence final movie performance. Based on the regression results, three hypotheses, 1, 2, and 4, are accepted, and two hypotheses, 3 and 5, are rejected. This study tries to link the network structure of e-WOM on online product communities with the product's performance. Based on the analysis of a real online movie community, the results show that online community network structures can work as a predictor of movie performance. The results show that the betweenness centralities of the reviewer community are critical for the prediction of movie performance. However, degree centralities and closeness centralities do not influence movie performance. As future research topics, similar analyses are required for other product categories such as electronic goods and online content to generalize the study results.