• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.137-142
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• 2005

Purpose: To evaluate the safety, efficacy and technical problems of the endoscopic balloon dilatation of esophageal anomalies in children. Methods: The medical records of 8 children treated by endoscopic balloon dilatation for esophageal anomalies over a 10-year period at Pusan National University Hospital were reviewed retrospectively. The balloon catheter (Maxforce TTS or CRE, Boston Scientific Co., USA) was positioned across the area of narrowing by direct visualization. The balloon was slowly inflated with normal saline to specified pressures for each balloon and maintained for 60 seconds and then deflated. After 60 seconds pause, the procedure was repeated with a larger sized balloon (increments of 1 mm for each subsequent dilation) till effective dilatation was confirmed by direct visualization without complications. Results: Three male and five female were included and their mean age was 4.2 years. A total of 27 (average of 3.2 per patient) dilatation were performed. Underlying diseases of patients are postoperative stricture of esophageal atresia in 3 cases, esophageal ring in 2 cases, achalasia, corrosive esophagitis and hypertensive LES in one case respectively. The size of initial dilating balloon was chosen on the basis of the diameter of the narrowing determined by endoscopy. The first dilation in patients with severe esophageal stricture was made with a 6 mm sized balloon. Complications observed were esophageal perforation and respiratory holding during the procedure in one case respectively. Successful outcome was seen in 6 patients (75%). Conclusion: Endoscopic balloon dilatation can provide a safe and effective mean of treating esophageal anomalies in children and should be considered the treatment of choice in the initial management of those cases.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.87-103
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• 2010

In the study, we introduce the trend in domestic and foreign web accessibility, as well as the legal system that ensures web accessibility. Based on Korean Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (KWCAG)1.0, we investigated the web content accessibility of 80 tertiary health-care hospitals and general hospitals in Korea. We evaluated accessibility by combining accessibility-based criteria (ABC) with usability-based criteria (UBC). ABC was limited to an alternative text for Guideline 1, using a small number of frames and keyboard accessibility for Guideline 2. UBC checked the voice service (TTS), resizing text, providing multi-lingual websites, and disclosing web accessibility policy. KADO-WAH2.0 was used for representing the compliance rate. The evaluation result was a considerable improvement from previous results, even though the rate of compliance with web accessibility was generally insufficient. There was a significant difference between those medical centers which did and did not comply with web accessibility. Incidentally, many hospitals were found to have attempted to confront and come to terms with web accessibility. In future, the following factors are advisable for medical centers with publicity or public interest: they must employ active and aggressive promotion of establishment of independent accessibility guidelines to secure web accessibility, they should effect an improvement of the realization of web accessibility, there can be constant education and promotion, and there can be an institutional supplementation, as well as others.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.14B no.1 s.111
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• pp.51-58
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• 2007

This paper suggests prototype of dialog system combining VXML(VoiceXML) that is the W3C's standard XML format for specifying interactive voice dialogues between human and computer, and RSS(RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) that is representative technology of semantic web for syndication and subscription of updated web-contents. Merits of the proposed system are as following: 1) It is a new method that recognize spoken contents using ire and wireless telephone networks and then provide contents to user via STT(Speech-to-Text) and TTS(Text-to-Speech) instead of traditional method using web only. 2) It can apply advantage of RSS that subscription of updated contents is converted to VXML without modifying traditional method to provide RSS service, 3) In terms of users, it can reduce restriction on time-spate in search of contents that is provided by RSS because it uses ire and wireless telephone networks, not internet environment. 4) In terms of information provider, it does not need special component for syndication of the newest contents using speech recognition and synthesis technology. We implemented a news service system using VXML and RSS for performance evaluation of the proposed system. In experiment results, we estimated the response time and the speech recognition rate in subscription and search of actuality contents, and confirmed that the proposed system can provide contents those are provided using RSS Feed.