• Archives of Obesity and Metabolism
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.71-75
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• 2023

Obesity is closely related to chronic diseases and cancer. The present case report aims to discuss the anti-obesity treatment strategy and the evaluation of the clinical progress in a patient with obesity and concurrent fatty liver disease. Following five months of treatment with liraglutide and rosuvastatin, the patient had a weight reduction of 3 kg (4.7%), a decrease in fasting blood sugar by 42 mg/dl (26.6%), a decrease in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol by 82 mg/dl (60.2%), and decrease in alanine transaminase. This case report documented the treatment of a patient with common chronic diseases encountered in the outpatient setting. Based on the therapeutic effects documented in clinical and laboratory indices, the anti-obesity treatment plan significantly aided in managing chronic diseases.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2004.11c
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• pp.322-324
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• 2004

Up to the present, digital replantation patients has appealed different symptoms due to blood circulatory failure. But, the level of blood circulatory failure has been evaluated only by clinical symptoms, or angiography. According to the cases of digit replantation is increasing, then objective evaluation methods of the level of blood circulation failure is needed other than patient's subjective symptoms and complaints. Although angiography, doppler, electromagnetic flowmeter, laser blood flowmeter, mechanical blood flowmeter has been used for the evaluation of the blood circulatory failure, the result was affected by time, place, surrounding temperature, patient's body temperature, and even emotion. Therefore, it is pointed out with lack of availability, feasibility and reproducibility. Thus, we compared digital blood flow of dominant hand to non dominant hand, and replanted fingers to opposite normal fingers from developed photo-plethysmography. The average digital blood flow showed no difference in normal digits each other, but, replanted digits showed average of 53% (9 - 100 %) compare to opposit normal digits. As it measure relative blood flow for circulatory failure of tissue such as fingers and toes more sensitively, reliably. In conclusion, it is expected that photo- plethysmography will be very useful for diagnosis, curative effect, prognosis of blood circulatory failure in digital replantation patient.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2007

The application of the knowledge from the Human Genome Project to clinical medicine will be through both industrial drug development and the application of pharmacogenomics (PG) to patient care. The slow uptake of clinical innovations into clinical practice can be frustrating, but understanding the history of acceptance and sustaining medical innovation is critically important to position PG to succeed. This primarily means that PG tests must have legitimacy; they must be thoroughly validated, must be cost-effective, must be widely accepted by medical practitioners, must be supported by public policy, and must have a way of being easily incorporated into current medical practice. They must also lead to actionalble decisions by health care providers for their patients. Innovative PG assays should be tested in the best US laboratories, and reimbursement for testing must be accepted at the federal and state level. The companies providing these PG tests should be capable of sup-porting the interpretation and use of the test throughout medical practice. Advances such as the addition of PG information to drug labeling and the routine use of validated biomarkers to determine choice of cancer chemotherapy have been made. The PG research community must pay attention to the principles that have been previously described for acceptance and sustaining medical innovations in order for PG to be widely accepted in clinical medical practice.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.179-186
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• 2008

This paper presents a portable tele-assessment system designed for remote evaluation of the hypertonic elbow joint of neurologically impaired patients. A patient's upper limb was securely strapped to a portable limb-stretching device which is connected through Internet to a portable haptic device by which a clinician remotely moved the patient's elbow joint and felt the resistance from the patient. Elbow flexion angle and joint torques were measured from both master and slave devices and bilaterally fed back to their counterparts. In order to overcome problems associated with the network latency, two different tele-operation schemes were proposed depending on relative speed of tasks compared to the amount of time delay. For slow movement tasks, the bilateral tele-operation was achieved in real-time by designing control architectures after causality analysis. For fast movement tasks, we used a semi-real-time tele-operation scheme which provided the clinicians with stable and transparent feeling. The tele-assessment system was verified experimentally on patients with stroke. The devices were made portable and low cost, which makes it potentially more accessible to patients in remote areas.

• Journal of Korean Medicine Rehabilitation
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.193-201
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• 2021

The aim of this study was to report the effect of Korean medicine treatment with scalp acupuncture of patient with lateropulsion, dizziness, headache caused by lateral medullary infarction. We treated the patient with scalp acupuncture, acupuncture, herbal medicine. Numeric rating scale (NRS), Korean version of berg balance scale (K-BBS), gait balance evaluation, dizziness handicap inventory (DHI), activities-specific balance confidence scale (ABC) and vestibular disorders activities of daily living scale (VADL) were used to evaluate symptoms. NRS of Lateropulsion, dizziness, headache were decreased. K-BBS score increased from 4 to 56, and in the gait balance evaluation, it returned to normal. DHI, VADL score were decreased and ABC score increased from 0 to 1,300. This case report shows that Korean medicine treatment with scalp acupuncture can be effective in lateral medullary infarction. However, further controlled studies are needed to confirm the effect of scalp acupuncture on such patients.

• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.90-99
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• 2021

Purpose: Nutrition screening is vital to ensure patients are appropriately managed in hospital. In paediatrics there is currently no universally accepted nutrition screening tool. The Nutrition Evaluation Screening Tool (NEST) was developed as an easy to use and practical screening tool for hospitalised children. We aim to evaluate compliance of the NEST and assess agreement of the NEST with the already validated nutrition screening tools, Screening Tool for Risk on Nutritional Status and Growth (STRONGkids), Screening Tool for the Assessment of Malnutrition in Paediatrics (STAMP) and the Subjective Global Nutritional Assessment (SGNA) tool. Methods: Retrospective review of 102 patient episodes at the Evelina London Children's Hospital. Electronic records were used to assess NEST compliance and to complete the nutrition tools for each patient episode. Cohen's kappa was used to determine the level of agreement between each nutrition tool. Results: There was moderate agreement between the NEST and the two screening tools, STRONGkids (κ=0.472) and STAMP (κ=0.416) for patients on initial screening at admission. 87.2% of patient episodes were NEST compliant within 24 hours of admission to hospital. Conclusion: The moderate agreement between these two already validated screening tools enhances the NEST's validity as a paediatric screening tool. The NEST had the strongest correlation with the SGNA tool compared to other screening tools. The NEST is user friendly screening tool for hospitalised children.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2021

Objective: This study aimed to overview and assess the effectiveness of the policies and regulations that have governed new drug access in Korea, and to propose policies to enhance patient access to drugs, particularly for new innovative medicines. Methods: We approached drug access issues in two perspectives: approval lag (or availability) and reimbursement lag (or affordability). The issues were identified and evaluated through the review of literature, public documents, reports published by the government agencies and private organizations, and news articles. Results: To shorten approval lag, it is recommended to hire and train more reviewers at the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. Increasing user fees to a realistic level can facilitate this process. To reduce reimbursement lag, flexible incremental cost-effectiveness ratio threshold, alternative cost-effectiveness evaluation, and establishment of funding source other than the national health insurance are identified as the areas to be improved. Conclusion: The current policies and regulations had to be supplemented by new systems to drastically promote patient accessibility to new drugs, consequently in order to promote national public health.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.27-42
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• 2013

Purpose: This study is aimed to provide the fundamental data for building the patient safety culture by identifying the perceptions of patient safety culture of hospital nurses. Methods: this study was a cross-sectional survey. For this study, 816 nurses participated from three general hospital and one university hospital located in Gwangju and Chonnam. The data were collected from April to June, 2012 by self-administrated questionnaires. The 'Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture'developed AHRQ(2004) and translated in Korean and edited by Je(2006), was used to measure the patient safety culture which the nurses were perceived. The collected data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Scheffe test using SPSS window 18.0. Results: With a possible score of 5 points, the average score for nurses'perceived patient safety culture 3.32. In the sub dimension of patient safety culture, the score hospital-level aspects was the highest level of 3.27(0.50) and reporting system medical errors was the lowest of 3.08(0.40). The difference of perception level on patient safety culture were statistically significant depending on demographic and job-related characteristics such as age, hospital level, work experience in present hospital, work experience in present unit, work experience in present area, positions, work hours of week. Conclusion: The scores of perception of which were shown to be relatively low in this study, needed to be improved through continuous education, evaluation and researches. We suggest developing a new tool on patient safety culture fit our country which will help to manage ongoing patient safety culture.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.83-91
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• 1986

The Carpentier-Edwards porcine xenograft valve was used in 21 patients at Seoul National University Hospital during the period between 1977 and 1979. Twenty-four Carpentier-Edwards valves were implanted along with 2 others. Three patients died within 30 days of operation, an operative mortality rate of 14.3%. Eighteen early survivors were followed up for a total 67.5 patient-years [mean, 45.0$\pm$32.0 months]. There were 2 late deaths with a linealized late mortality rate of 2.96%/patient-year; one died from cerebral bleeding [1.48% bleeding/patient-year] and the other from prosthetic valve endocarditis [1, 48% endocarditis/patient-year]. There was no case of thromboembolism. Two patients developed mitral regurgitation [2.96% failure/patient-year]. Symptomatic improvement was excellent. The actuarial survival rate and the probability of freedom from overall valve failure were 75.3$\pm$9.6% and 80.7$\pm$12.9% at 9 years after surgery respectively. During the period from October, 1968, through June, 1985, 1, 190 substitute heart valves were used in a total of 967 patients at Seoul National University Hospital; of which, 90.9% were either porcine aortic or bovine pericardial xenograft valves. For the evaluation of the xenograft tissue valves, the consecutive patients with lonescu-Shiley valve in the mitral, aortic and both positions, Angell-Shiley valve and Carpentier-Edwards valve were recently studied on the clinical ground. They were 531 patients, and 643 xenograft valves were used. The operative mortality rate was 6.97% and a linealized late mortality rate 2.94%/patient-year. A total of 490 early survivors were followed up for 917.6 patient-years [mean, 22.5 months], and 70% of patients completed the follow-up. The linealized incidences of complications were: 2.29% emboli/patient-year, 1.98% bleeding/patient-year, 1.20% endocarditis/patient-year, and 3.49% failure/patient-year. These clinical resutls are fully comparable with those in the major reports. The durability of the glutaraldehydepreserved xenograft heart valves remains as a great concern and a continuing debate, expecially for the group of patients in the pediatric age. The need of more durable material for the improved tissue valves was also discussed.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.833-845
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• 2021

Parkinson's syndrome is a degenerative brain disease that presents characteristic motor symptoms of tremor, rigidity, and gait disturbance. In addition to these motor symptoms, Parkinson's syndrome also presents non-motor symptoms (NMSs) such as sleep disturbance and cognitive decline. NMSs reduce patient's quality of life and psychosocial functioning and cause economic burden on the patient, so appropriate evaluation and treatment are required. Lewy body dementia is one of the several diseases belonging to Parkinson's syndrome. Its symptoms such as cognitive function, memory impairment, and hallucinations occur with Parkinsonism. Although drug therapy is being used with drug treatment to treat non-motor symptoms, it has limitations such as side effects, which stimulated interest in other complementary treatment methods such as oriental medicine treatment, dance, and yoga. The patient in this case complained of tremor in the right upper extremity, muscle hypertension and pain, and persistent vision, memory, and cognitive decline. The patient was diagnosed with probable Lewy body dementia. The patient was hospitalized for 4 months and received acupuncture and herbal medicines. After treatment, the patient's NMS scale scores decreased from 90 to 63, and the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale scores (summed I, II, and III) decreased from 17 points to 8 points. The Beck Depression Inventory score decreased from 22 points to 13 points. In addition, the patient's subjective evaluation revealed improvement. In this case, a patient diagnosed with probable Lewy body dementia who did not respond to the standard treatment and did not want to take medications showed improvement in not only motor symptoms but also NMSs after integrative Korean medicine treatment.