• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.238-244
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• 2023

Background: Occipital neuralgia (ON) is an established risk factor for headaches in the posterior cervical region. Several conservative treatments by nerve decompression and pain relief are available for ON, but these treatments have limitations. Acupuncture treatment, which is known to demonstrate analgesic effects, involves various stimulation methods, and several studies have reported their clinical benefit. No recent systematic review (SR) has compared each acupuncture type for ON treatment. Thus, this SR aims to investigate the clinical effectiveness of each acupuncture type for treating ON. Methods: We will identify relevant studies using electronic databases, including EMBASE, MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Korean Studies Information Service System (KISS), Korean Medical Database, KoreaMed, and National Digital Science Library (NDSL) from the inception until August 2023. The primary outcome will include the numerical change of pain symptoms (visual analog scale and numerical rating scale) and effective rate. Safety and secondary outcomes will include adverse events and quality of life. We will compare the conservative treatment with the acupuncture treatment using network meta-analysis. The Cochrane Collaboration "risk of bias" tools will be used to assess the quality of included trials. The Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation will be used to examine the evidence level. Conclusion: This study will provide clinical evidence of several acupuncture types for ON and help clinicians decide on the best.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.867-872
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• 2016

Background: Esophageal cancer is one of the most serious malignancies. Due to the aggressive nature of this cancer, the prognosis is poor. A network meta-analysis with simultaneous comparison of multiple treatments can help determine better treatment options that have higher effects on overall survival of patients with lower adverse events. The aim of this review is to simultaneously compare efficacy and adverse events of treatment interventions for esophageal cancer. Materials and Methods: In this review, only randomized control trials (RCT) will be considered for network meta-analysis. All international electronic databases including Medline, Web of Sciences, Scopus, Cochran's library, EMBASE and Cancerlit will be searched to find randomized control trials which compared two or more treatment interventions for esophageal cancer. A network plot will be drawn for visual representation of all available treatment interventions. Bayesian approach will be used to combine the direct and indirect evidence. Treatment effects (e.g. hazard ratio for time to event outcomes, risk ratio for binary outcomes, and rate ratio for count outcomes with 95% credible interval) will be reported. Moreover, cumulative probability of the treatment ranks will be reported using the surface under the cumulative ranking (SUCRA) graphs. Consistency assumption will be assessed by the loop-specific and design-by-treatment interaction approaches. Conclusions: The results of this study may be helpful for the patients, clinicians and health policy makers in selecting treatments that have the best effect on survival and lowest adverse events.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.66 no.8
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• pp.1272-1277
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• 2017

To assist radiologists for the characterization of breast masses, Computer-aided Diagnosis(CADx) system has been studied. The CADx system can improve the diagnostic accuracy of radiologists by providing objective information about breast masses. Morphological and texture features were extracted from the breast ultrasound images. Based on extracted features, the CADx system retrieves masses that are similar to a query mass from a reference library using a k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) approach. Eight similarity measures of distance, Euclidean, Chebyshev(Minkowski family), Canberra, Lorentzian($F_2$ family), Wave Hedges, Motyka(Intersection family), and Cosine, Dice(Inner Product family) are evaluated by ROC(Receiver Operating Characteristic) analysis. The Inner Product family measure used with the k-NN classifier provided slightly higher performance for classification of malignant and benign masses than those with the Minkowski, $F_2$, and Intersection family measures.

• Anatomy and Cell Biology
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.3-13
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• 2022

The Gantzer's muscle is often present in the flexor compartment of the forearm. It lies underneath flexor digitorum superficialis and compresses the anterior interosseous nerve. Furthermore, this muscle frequently bestows an accessory muscle of flexor pollicis longus or flexor digitorum profundus, or sometimes together. The current meta-analysis aims to compute the prevalence of subtypes of Gantzer's muscle. Major electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, etc.) were searched for title and abstract. After removing the duplicate citations, the titles/abstracts were shortlisted with the help of inclusion and exclusion criteria. The shortlisted titles/abstracts were downloaded or collected from the library. The data of all subtypes of Gantzer's muscle were pooled from shortlisted published manuscripts for meta-analysis. The pooled estimate of other anatomical characteristics was also observed. A total of 59 cadaveric studies of sample size 5,903 were evaluated for pooled prevalence of flexor pollicis longus (accessory head). Similarly, the authors evaluated 14 studies of 1,627 upper limbs for flexor digitorum profundus (accessory head). The unit of analysis was per 100 upper limbs. The Pooled prevalence of accessory muscle of flexor pollicis longus and flexor digitorum profundus were 48% (95% CI, 44%-52%) and 17% (95% CI, 13%-21%), respectively. The Gantzer's muscle is present in 2/3rd of the upper limbs. Accessory head of flexor pollicis longus is almost three times more common than the accessory head of flexor digitorum profundus. A classification of Gantzer's muscle is needed to reduce the ignorance of these variants.

• Journal of Korean Medicine Rehabilitation
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.11-20
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• 2018

Objectives To systematically explore the effects of acupuncture treatment for rotator cuff disorders and review the clinical trials. Methods We searched 9 electronic databases (PubMed, Cochrane central, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure [CNKI], Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information [KISTI], National Digital Science Library [NDSL], Korean studies Information Service System [KISS], Research Information Sharing Service [RISS], Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated System [OASIS]) to find randomized controlled trials that used acupunture treatment for rotator cuff disorders. We assessed the designs of the randomized controlled trials and the method of acupuncture treatment according to the Standards for Reporting Interventions in Clinical Trials of Acupuncture (STRICTA). The methodological quality of randomized controlled trials were assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias (RoB) tool. Results Total 5 trials were reviewed. 4 out of 5 randomized clinical trials reported meaningful effects of acupuncture treatments compared to control group. However risk of bias seemed high. Conclusions Although the results suggest that acupuncture treatment has favorable effects for rotator cuff disorders, most of the studies included methodologically high risk of bias. Thus, well designed randomized clinical trials which evaluate the effects of acupuncture treatment for rotator cuff disorders should be encouraged.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.265-282
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• 2004

Objective : The aim of this study was to review systemically clinical trials on the effectiveness and safety of herbal medicines in the treatment of osteoarthritis. Methods : Computerized literature searches were carried out on seven electronic databases, and hand-searching on some chinese medical journals in library of Kyung Hee Medical Center. Trial data were extracted in a standardized, predefined manner and assessed independently. Results : 1. Thirty reports of clinical trials and two reports of meta-analyses concerning herbal medicine were collected and reviewed. Among these reports three medical herbs were applied as topical medicine and others as internal medicine. 2. The western studies established NSAIDs or placebo as their control group. Five chinese reports established formulated herb pill(Ruanshnagshenjin pill) as their control group and Six did not establish a control group at all. 3. ACR was the most highly used diagnostic criteria in the western studies while the Chinese used their official criteria established by their government or the criteria of their text books. 4. 20 reports chose the Lequesne functional index, SHAQ, WOMAC OA index, AIMS, and their own unique scoring system as the criteria of analysing the effect. Others chose clinical symptoms, articular functions, and lab finding as their criteria. 5. 7 single herbs and 19 formulated herbs were studied. Among the formulated herbs, Achyranthes japonica was studied in 10 of the studies and Angelica gigantis Radix in 8, making them the most often studied herbs among the studies.

• The Journal of Churna Manual Medicine for Spine and Nerves
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.35-42
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• 2021

Objectives The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of chuna manual therapy for rhinitis. Methods We performed a literature search using ten electronic databases (PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Chinese Academic Journals(CAJ), Research Information Sharing Service(RISS), Dbpia, National Digital Science Library(NDSL), Koreanstudies Information Service System(KISS), Korean Medical database(KMbase), and Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated System(OASIS)) and two academic journals up to the end of April 2021. We included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) which appraised the effect of chuna manual therapy (CMT) in the treatment of rhinitis. The risk of bias was evaluated from the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. Results 4 appropriate RCTs were included and analyzed. The efficacy rate of the CMT group was statistically higher compared to the control group treated with medicine[RR 1.14 (95%CI 1.06 1.22), P<0.01]. Conclusions Based on results, CMT could be effective in rhinitis. However, evidence were limited due to small number of studies, lack of well-designed RCT and regional bias. Further well-designed research should be required to obtain stronger evidence.

• Journal of Korean Medicine Rehabilitation
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.95-103
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• 2022

Objectives This study was conducted to assess the effect of chuna manual therapy after hip arthroplasty. Methods We searched across 9 electronic databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, Wangfang data, China National Knowledge Infrastructure [CNKI], Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated System [OASIS], National Digital Science Library [NDSL], Korean Medical Database [KMBASE], Koreanstudies Information Service System [KISS], Research Information Sharing Service [RISS]) to find randomized controlled clinical trials for chuna manual therapy after hip arthroplasty. Results On inclusion criteria, 11 appropriate studies were included and analyzed. The deep vein thrombosis incidence of the chuna manual therapy group was statistically lower than the conventional treatment group (p=0.0002). Chuna manual therapy significantly improved the Harris hip score compared with conventional treatment (p<0.00001). Also, chuna manual therapy combined with herbal fumigation therapy significantly elevated the hip joint function score of Harris hip score compared with the conventional therapy group (p<0.00001). Conclusions The systematic review showed that chuna manual therapy had significant effects on hip arthroplasty. Nonetheless, considering the high risk of bias and geographic bias, further research with well-designed studies is required to support the effectiveness of chuna manual therapy.

• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.121-131
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• 2020

Purpose: To determine the long-term efficacy of the anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) agents, infliximab (IFX) and adalimumab (ADA), in pediatric luminal Crohn's disease (CD) by performing a systematic literature review. Methods: An electronic search was performed in Medline, Embase, and the Cochrane Library from inception to September 26, 2019. Eligible studies were cohort studies with observation periods that exceeded 1 year. Studies that reported time-to-event analyses were included. Events were defined as discontinuation of anti-TNF therapy for secondary loss of response. We extracted the probabilities of continuing anti-TNF therapy 1, 2, and 3 years after initiation. Results: In total, 2,464 papers were screened, 94 were selected for full text review, and 13 studies (11 on IFX, 2 on ADA) met our eligibility criteria for inclusion. After 1 year, 83-97% of patients were still receiving IFX therapy. After 2 and 3 years the probability of continuing IFX therapy decreased to 67-91% and 61-85%, respectively. In total, 5 of the 11 studies subgrouped by concomitant medication consistently showed that the probabilities of continuing IFX therapy in patients with prolonged immunomodulator use were higher than those in patients on IFX monotherapy. Conclusion: This review of real-world evidence studies confirms the long-term therapeutic benefit of IFX therapy in diverse cohorts of children with luminal CD. Moreover, it supports the view that combination therapy with an immunomodulator prolongs the durability of IFX therapy in patients who previously failed to recover following first-line therapy. The limited number of time-to-event studies in patients on ADA prevented us from drawing definite conclusions about its long-term efficacy.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.164-172
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• 2019

This study examined the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)-related variables of firefighters through a systematic literature review. Electronic databases were searched, including RISS, National Assembly Library, NDSL, KmBase. The search terms were PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Firefighter. Eleven studies from 146 references screened were included. All studies were non-experimental and correlational analyses. The positive correlation factors were age, duration of work, traumatic events, frequency of mobilization, number and strength of traumatic events experienced, work burden, coping method, D-type personality, depression, and anger rumination. The negative correlation factors were resilience, social support, self-esteem. To improve the mental health of firefighters in the future, professional intervention programs should be constructed to improve resilience, social support, and self-esteem, which are protective factors of PTSD.