• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.156-159
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• 2013

Background: Cardiac pacemakers are known to be susceptible to strong electromagnetic fields (EMFs). This in vivo study investigated occurrence of electromagnetic interference with pacemakers caused by common environmental sources of EMFs. Methods: Eleven volunteers with a pacemaker were exposed to EMFs produced by two mobile phone base stations, an electrically powered commuter train, and an overhead high voltage transmission lines. All the pacemakers were programmed in normal clinically selected settings with bipolar sensing and pacing configurations. Results: None of the pacemakers experienced interference in any of these exposure situations. However, often it is not clear whether or not strong EMFs exist in various work environments, and hence an individual risk assessment is needed. Conclusions: Modern pacemakers are well shielded against external EMFs, and workers with a pacemaker can most often return to their previous work after having a pacemaker implanted. However, an appropriate risk assessment is still necessary after the implantation of a pacemaker, a change of its generator, or major modification of its programming settings.

• Journal of Dental Anesthesia and Pain Medicine
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.39-44
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• 2020

Homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HoFH) is a rare inherited disorder that presents as abnormally elevated levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and premature heart disease, requiring frequent intervention through lipid apheresis for management. The risk of perioperative cardiac events is higher in patients with HoFH because of its pathophysiological manifestations in the vascular system. Careful cardiac precautions and anesthetic assessments are necessary to ensure patient safety. In the following case report, we discuss the clinical course and anesthetic considerations for a 14-year-old girl with HoFH undergoing sedation for dental extractions and mandibular molar uprighting in an outpatient oral surgery clinic. Considerations included the use of heparin in the patient's weekly plasma lipid apheresis treatment. In order to reduce the risks of peri- and postoperative bleeding and perioperative cardiac events, the operation was scheduled for 4 days after apheresis. This allowed for adequate heparin clearance, while also reducing the likelihood of possible cardiac events. A literature review revealed no results for the outpatient management of patients with HoFH undergoing sedation for noncardiac procedures. Our reported case serves as a clinical example for physicians to be utilized in the future.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.60 no.8
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• pp.237-244
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• 2017

During the last 10 years, there have been major technological achievements in pediatric interventional cardiology. In addition, there have been several advances in cardiac imaging, especially in 3-dimensional imaging of echocardiography, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and cineangiography. Therefore, more types of congenital heart diseases can be treated in the cardiac catheter laboratory today than ever before. Furthermore, lesions previously considered resistant to interventional therapies can now be managed with high success rates. The hybrid approach has enabled the overcoming of limitations inherent to percutaneous access, expanding the application of endovascular therapies as adjunct to surgical interventions to improve patient outcomes and minimize invasiveness. Percutaneous pulmonary valve implantation has become a successful alternative therapy. However, most of the current recommendations about pediatric cardiac interventions (including class I recommendations) refer to off-label use of devices, because it is difficult to study the safety and efficacy of catheterization and transcatheter therapy in pediatric cardiac patients. This difficulty arises from the challenge of identifying a control population and the relatively small number of pediatric patients with congenital heart disease. Nevertheless, the pediatric interventional cardiology community has continued to develop less invasive solutions for congenital heart defects to minimize the need for open heart surgery and optimize overall outcomes. In this review, various interventional procedures in patients with congenital heart disease are explored.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.54-62
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• 1990

The thermodiluton is a standard method to measure cardiac output in clinical medicine. However it has many disadvantages such as expensive instrument and measurement, limited number of measurement, pain, safety problem, and side-effect due to insertion of catheter into heart. Electrical Impedance Cardiography has no such disadvantages and that it can continuously monitor stroke volume, contractility of cardiac muscle, and systolic time interval (STI) as well as cardiac output. While this impedance technique has been widely used and vigorously studied adroad, it is not introduced yet in Korea. Thus an Impedance Cardiograph has been developed in order to introduce this new technique. Its accuracy also has been verified by simultaneous measurement of cardiac output with the thermodilution technique. Finally changes of cardiac function during exercise were also measured.

• The Korean Journal of Emergency Medical Services
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.51-61
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• 2017

Purpose: This study measured return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) in relation to dispatch distance in patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Methods: Of 2,347 out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients transported by emergency medical technicians in J Province between January 1 and December 31, 2015, those under age 18, those with reserved resuscitation, and those with traumatic cardiac arrest, leaving 855 patients in the study sample. ROSC was compared between those with dispatch distance ${\leq}4km$ (short dispatch distance, 465 patients) and those with dispatch distance >4 km (long dispatch distance, 390 patients). Results: The mean was 2.17 km in the short dispatch group and 9.87 km in the long dispatch group (p=.000). Mean distance from was 6.49 km and 13.39 km in the two groups, respectively (p=.000). ROSC differed significantly between the short and long dispatch distance groups (7.1% for short dispatch distance, 3.6% for long dispatch distance, p=.025). The length of time from to cardiopulmonary resuscitation also differed significantly between the short and long dispatch distance groups (8.77 minutes and 14.63 minutes, respectively, p=.000). Conclusion: ROSC was lower in areas of long dispatch distance compared to those of short dispatch distance. We expect this was most likely due to differences in response time by age and dispatch distance to the scene of cardiac arrest. However, no significant differences were found between the groups in the factors affecting ROSC.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.60 no.7
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• pp.1417-1426
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• 2011

Radiofrequency ablation through cardiac catheterization is one of minimally invasive intervention procedures used in drug resistant arrhythmia treatment. To facilitate more accurate and precise catheter navigation, systems for robotic cardiac catheter navigation have been developed and commercialized. The authors have been developing a novel robotic catheter navigation system. The system is a network-based master-slave configuration 3-DOF (Degree-Of-Freedom) robotic manipulator for operation with conventional cardiac ablation catheter. The catheter manipulation motion is composed of the translation (forward/backward) and the roll movements of the catheter and knob rotation for the catheter tip articulation. The master manipulator comprises an operator handle compartment for the knob and the roll movement input, and a base platform for the translation movement input. The slave manipulator implements a robotic catheter platform in which conventional cardiac catheter is mounted and the 3-DOF motions of the catheter are controlled. The system software that runs on a realtime OS based PC, implements the master-slave motion synchronization control in the robot system. The master-slave motion synchronization performance tested with step, sinusoidal and arbitrarily varying motion commands showed satisfactory results with acceptable level of steady state error. The developed system will be further improved through evaluation of safety and performance in in vitro and in vivo tests.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.397-405
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• 2005

Noise may cause damage of the auditory system, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. However, we haven't the data enough to be available for understanding various effects of noise on the human body. The current study was prospectively designed to investigate the changes of the cardiac factors and cerebral hemodynamics following a transient exposure to noise in young people. 80 subjects (mean aged $23.45\pm2.40$ years) participated in this experiment and were exposed to excavator-noise with 90 decibels for 15 minutes using ear-phone. Cardiac factors such as heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP) and heart rate-systolic pressure product (RPP), and cerebral hemodynamics such as mean blood flow velocities (Vm), pulsatility indexes (PI), resistance indexes (RI) and mean blood flow velocities at breathing-hold (Vh) in the middle (MCA), anterior (ACA) and posterior cerebral arteries (PCA) were measured before (baseline) and during the noise-exposure. Although there were individual differences in above mentioned parameters, HR, systolic and diastolic BP, RPP, MCA-Vm, MCA-PI, MCA-RI, ACA-Vm, ACA-PI, ACA-RI, PCA-Vm, PCA-PI, and PCA-RI during the noise-exposure decreased compared with the baselines (P<0.05 or P<0.01), The findings of the present study suggest that a transient exposure to excavator-noise at rest causes changes in the cardiac factors and cerebral hemodynamics with individual differences. Further studies need to be carried out for clarifying the effects of longer exposure and combined mental activity with noise exposure.

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.414-419
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• 2023

Background: The recurrence of ventricular arrhythmias (VAs) in patients who have already undergone treatment with antiarrhythmic medication, catheter ablation, and the insertion of implantable cardioverter defibrillators is not uncommon. Recent studies have shown that bilateral cardiac sympathetic denervation (BCSD) effectively treats VAs. However, only a limited number of studies have confirmed the safety of BCSD as a viable therapeutic option for VAs. Methods: This single-center study included 10 patients, who had a median age of 54 years (interquartile range [IQR], 45-65 years) and a median ejection fraction of 58.5% (IQR, 56.2%-60.8%), with VAs who underwent video-assisted BCSD. BCSD was executed as a single-stage surgery for 8 patients, while the remaining 2 patients initially underwent left cardiac sympathetic denervation followed by right cardiac sympathetic denervation. We evaluated postoperative complications, the duration of hospital stays, and VA-related symptoms before and after surgery. Results: The median hospital stay after surgery was 2 days (IQR, 2-3 days). The median surgical time for BCSD was 113 minutes (IQR, 104-126 minutes). No significant complications occurred during hospitalization or after discharge. During the median follow-up period of 13.5 months (IQR, 10.5-28.0 months) from surgery, no VA-related symptoms were observed in 70% of patients. Conclusion: The benefits of a short postoperative hospitalization and negligible complications make BCSD a safe, alternative therapeutic option for patients suffering from refractory VAs.

• International Journal of Stem Cells
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.281-292
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• 2023

Background and Objectives: Human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived cardiomyocyte (CM) hold great promise as a cellular source of CM for cardiac function restoration in ischemic heart disease. However, the use of animal-derived xenogeneic substances during the biomanufacturing of hiPSC-CM can induce inadvertent immune responses or chronic inflammation, followed by tumorigenicity. In this study, we aimed to reveal the effects of xenogeneic substances on the functional properties and potential immunogenicity of hiPSC-CM during differentiation, demonstrating the quality and safety of hiPSC-based cell therapy. Methods and Results: We successfully generated hiPSC-CM in the presence and absence of xenogeneic substances (xeno-containing (XC) and xeno-free (XF) conditions, respectively), and compared their characteristics, including the contractile functions and glycan profiles. Compared to XC-hiPSC-CM, XF-hiPSC-CM showed early onset of myocyte contractile beating and maturation, with a high expression of cardiac lineage-specific genes (ACTC1, TNNT2, and RYR2) by using MEA and RT-qPCR. We quantified N-glycolylneuraminic acid (Neu5Gc), a xenogeneic sialic acid, in hiPSC-CM using an indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and liquid chromatography-multiple reaction monitoring-mass spectrometry. Neu5Gc was incorporated into the glycans of hiPSC-CM during xeno-containing differentiation, whereas it was barely detected in XF-hiPSC-CM. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to show that the electrophysiological function and glycan profiles of hiPSC-CM can be affected by the presence of xenogeneic substances during their differentiation and maturation. To ensure quality control and safety in hiPSC-based cell therapy, xenogeneic substances should be excluded from the biomanufacturing process.

• Journal of Veterinary Clinics
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.17-22
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• 2009

Pimobendan is a recently developed cardiac drug which is useful to control moderate to severe congestive heart failure (CHF) from chronic mitral valvular diseases (CMVI). Because of controversy related to the efficacy and safety of pimobendan in dogs, the optimal efficacy and safety of pimobendan was assessed in 20 dogs with CMVI in this study. Scores for quality of life, respiratory failure, circulatory failure and heart failure were evaluated along with radiographical and echocardiographical assessments for about 2 months period after the addition of pimobendan into the regular cardiac medications. This study proved clear evidence that pimobendan had beneficial therapeutic effects in dogs with advanced CMVI, without particular adverse effects. However, further studies are warranted to address the drug interaction with other cardiac therapeutics and to assess therapeutic effects in CHF from other type of heart diseases in dogs and other animals.