• The Korean Journal of Pain
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.74-78
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• 2000

Background: Epidural Adhesiolysis is an interventional pain management technique for patients with low back pain. In addition to local anesthetics and corticosteroid, hypertonic saline (NaCl) are used for the technique. Present study was aimed to compare analgesic and adverse effects of two different concentration of hypertonic saline in Epidural Adhesiolysis. Methods: Fifty-three subjects with low back pain with radiculopathy were assigned to one of two epidural adhesiolysis treatment groups: 8% (Group I, n=26) or 10% (Group II, n=27) hypertonic saline. 17 G epidural needle was inserted at sacral hiatus and catheter was advanced untill its tip was located at lesion site under fluoroscopic guidance. Subjects in all treatment groups received epidural corticosteroid and local anesthetic. And then, hypertonic saline injection via catheter were carried out daily for 3 days. Evaluation included assessment of pain relief (Numerical Rating Scale; NRS) at post-epidural adhesiolysis 1, 2, 3 days, 1 week, and 1, 3 months. We also looked for complications of epidural adhesiolysis at different concentration of hypertonic saline. Results: Statistical analysis demonstrated that NRS was not significantly different between two groups during 3 months after epidural adhesiolysis. There were no major differences of complications between two groups and disappeard after a few months without residual sequelae. Conclusions: We conclude that epidural adhesiolysis using 8% hypertonic saline is effective for relief of low back pain with proven lumbosacral fibrosis without any residual sequelae compared with 10%.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.30 no.5 s.81
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• pp.417-426
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• 2004

We investigate changing characteristics and concentration distribution of ambient air quality using data from which obtained local ambient air monitoring network and local meterological measuring sites in Gwangju area from January to December in 2003. Sulfur dioxide ($SO_2$) showed that increase from 8 AM and decrease in 6 PM but, it was not drastically changed concentration. it also 0.010 ppm in 1995 from at this time it's decrease step by step and than some constant in year 2001 to 2003. Nitrogen dioxide ($NO_2$) concentration was showed highest peak in 10 AM and increase again at 6 PM. And also it showed peak concentration (0.026 ppm) in 2001 and decreased from after that times. Ozone was showed peak concentration in 1 PM and Nitrogen dioxide was ditto in 10 AM from this data, we can conclude that this two article ws showed chemical reaction by 3 to 5 hours. There was no case of Ozone alarm in Gwangju area since 1995, but it showed highest ozone concentration (over 0.070 ppm) in May and June of the year and 2 to 4 PM of the day and sometimes it showed increase at the dawn. Ozone product optimum condition was that air temperature is over $25^{\circ}C$, no rain and increase solar radiation (over $20MJ/m^2$) and no wind or below 2.0 m/s wind speed.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.47-57
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• 2013

Studies evaluating the health effects of hazardous air pollutants assume that people's exposure to typical pollutant level is the same as specific regional pollutant level. However, depending on social and demographic factors, time-activity pattern of people can vary widely. Since most people live in indoor environments over 88% of the day, evaluating exposure to hazardous air pollutants is hard to characterize. Objective of this study was to estimate the exposure levels of university students of $NO_2$, VOCs(BTEX) and $PM_{10}$ using the scenarios with time-activity pattern and indoor concentrations. Using data from time-use survey of National Statistical Office in 2009, we investigated time-activity pattern of university students and hourly major action. A total of 1,057 university students on weekday and 640 on weekend spent their times at indoor house 13.04 hr(54.32%), other indoors 7.70 hr(32.06%), and transportation 2.36 hr(9.83%). Indoor environments in which university students spent their times were mainly house and school. Air pollutants concentrations of other indoor environments except house and school such as bar, internet cafe and billiard hall were higher than outdoors, indicating that indoor to outdoor ratios were above 1. According to three types of exposure scenarios, exposure to air pollutants could be reduced by going home after school.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.352-358
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• 2015

It is important to guarantee the safety of vehicle to minimize the damage to the driver in case of the accidents. In order to inspect and later enhance the safety of vehicle, the owner of the vehicle usually have a vehicle safety inspection. The Korea Transportation Safety Authority (KOTSA) issues the Comprehensive Performance Inspection Certificate after vehicle inspection. The certificate only specify the legal inspection criteria for safety and measured values of the safety parameters, however, as ordinary driver in lack of expert knowledge about the vehicle is difficult to understand the contents of the Certificate. Thus, in this paper, the authors try to give the information about the inspection results in easier way to understand. This information not only guarantees the owner of the vehicle to better understand the inspection results, but it also gives the opportunity to the driver to deal with the specific problem listed in the results. The methods in this paper are to transform the vehicle inspection data into the non parametric distribution to easily represent the values to the index later on. Also, example indexes are presented to the actually inspected vehicle based on the reference distribution to show the better assessment of the developed method.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.482-487
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• 2014

Objective : We assessed the life-time prevalence (LTP) of chronic low back pain (LBP) in young Korean males. We also evaluated the relationship between lumbar spinal lesions and their health related quality-of-life (HRQOL). Methods : A cross-sectional, self-reported survey was conducted in Korean males (aged 19-year-old) who underwent physical examinations for the conscript. We examined 3331 examinees in November 2014. We included 2411 subjects, who accepted to participate this study without any comorbidities. We interviewed using simple binary questions for their LBP experience and chronicity. HRQOL was assessed by Short-Form Health-Survey-36 (SF-36) in chronic LBP and healthy control groups. Radiological assessment was performed in chronic LBP group to determine whether there were any pathological causes of their symptoms. Results : The LTP of chronic LBP was 13.4%. Most (71.7%) of them didn't have any lumbar spinal lesions (i.e., non-specific chronic LBP). The SF-36 subscale and summary scores were significantly lower in subjects with chronic LBP. Between specific and non-specific chronic LBP group, all physical and mental subscale scores were significantly lower in specific chronic LBP group, except mental health (MH) subscale score. In MH subscale and mental component summary score, statistical significant differences didn't appear between two groups (p=0.154, 0.126). Conclusion : In Korean males 19 years of age, the LTP of chronic LBP was 13.4%, and more than two-thirds were non-specific chronic LBP. Chronic LBP had a significant impact on HRQOL. The presence of lumbar spinal pathoanatomical lesions affected mainly on the physical aspect of HRQOL. It influenced little on the mental health.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.652-660
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• 2016

This study was performed on 171 workers in the Kyungbuk Kumi industrial complex to verify the validity and the reliability of the Korean version of the constitutions in a Chinese medicine questionnaire. Each subjective fulfilled a questionnaire of 61 questions in 9 categories based on a self-assessment. All categories and each constitution's internal consistency were analyzed using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient to review the questionnaire's reliability, and factor analysis and correlation analysis were performed to review the validity. The reliability was satisfied with Cronbach's alpha coefficient for all categories and each constitution's internal consistency ranged from 0.601 to 0.925, and the validity was verified by factor analysis, which showed the same two factors of each constitution. Correlation analysis of each constitution showed statistical significance and strong positive correlations among 8 constitutions except for the gentleness type (P=0.0127). As a result, it is believed that the Korean version of the constitutions in Chinese medicine questionnaire can be useful for diagnosing the constitutions of Koreans.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.11 no.4 s.29
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• pp.47-57
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• 2005

The goal of this research is to evaluate landscape-ecological characteristics of watersheds in the Nakdong River Basin by using Geogaphic Information System (GIS) and landscape indices for integation of spatio-temporal informations and multivariate statistical techniques for quantitative analysis of forest landscape. Fragmentation index and change matrix techniques using factor analysis and grid overlay method were used to efficiently analyze and manage huge amount of information for ecological-environmental assessment (land-cover and forest landscape patterns). According to the results based on the pattern analysis of land-cover changes using the change detection matrix between 1980s and 1990s, addition on 750km$^2$ became urbanized areas. The altered 442.04km$^2$ was agricultural areas which is relatively easy for shifting of land-use, and 205.1km$^2$ of forests became urbanized areas, and average elevation and slope of the whole altered areas were 75m and 4$^{\circ}$. On the other hand, 120km$^2$ of urban areas were changed into other areas (i.e., agricultural areas and green space), and fortunately, certain amount of naturalness had been recovered. But still those agricultural areas and fallow areas, which were previously urban areas, had high potential of re-development for urbanization due to their local conditions. According to the structural analysis of forest landscape using the landscape indices, the forest fragmentation of watersheds along the main stream of the Nakdong River was more severe than my other watersheds. Furthermore, the Nakdong-sangju and Nakdong-miryang watersheds had unstable forest structures as well as least amount of forest quantity. Thus, these areas need significant amount of forest through a new forest management policy considering local environmental conditions.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.28-35
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• 2014

Objectives This study aimed to identify the relationship between quality of life (QoL) and psychosocial factors of schizophrenia patients registered in a community mental health center. Methods The ninety patients with schizophrenia, diagnosed by Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fourth Edition-Text Revision, registered in a community mental health center were studied cross-sectionally. Four trained personnels interviewed each subject individually for the assessment of QoL, psychopathology, severity of depressed mood, insight of illness, attitude toward drugs, social function, degree of social supports and conflicts. Results QoL was significantly related to the psychopathology, depressed mood, social conflict, social support; and other aspects of QoL were slightly differently related to depressed mood, social conflict, social support and attitude toward drug by scales. In multiple regression analysis, depressed mood (20.0%) and social conflict (10.3%) were contributed to QoL assessed by Korean version of 4th revision of Schizophrenia Quality of Life. Social support (21.4%), social conflict (20.9%) and depressed mood (3.1%) were contributed to QoL assessed by Korean modification of the Scale to measure Subjective Well-being under Neuroleptic treatment. Conclusions These findings demonstrated that QoL of schizophrenia patients in a community is affected by depressed mood, social support and conflict rather than psychotic symptoms, insight and attitude toward drugs. And this result suggests the necessity of approaching not only to the psychotic symptoms but also to the psychosocial characteristics in caring schizophrenia patients in the community.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.118-122
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• 2007

This study was performed to evaluate the bioequivalency between the Osmetone$^{TM}$ Tablet (Myeongmoon Pharm. Co., Ltd.) as a test formulation and the Relafen$^{TM}$ Tablet (Handok Pharm. Co., Ltd.) as a reference formulation. Twenty-four healthy male volunteers were administered the formulations by the randomized Latin square crossover design, and the plasma samples were determined by a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with Ultra-Violet (UV) detector. AUC$_t$, C$_{max}$ and T$_{max}$ were obtained from the time-plasma concentration curves, and log-transformed AUC$_t$ and C$_{max}$ and log-untransformed T$_{max}$ values for two formulations were compared by statistical tests and analysis of variation. AUC$_t$ was determined to be 897.8${\pm}$431.1 ug.hr/ml for the reference formulation and 902.3${\pm}$408.4 ug.hr/ml for the test formulation. The mean values of C$_{max}$ for the reference and test formulations were 24.2${\pm}$8.9 and 24.0${\pm}$9.5 ug/ml, respectively. The AUC$_t$ and C$_{max}$ ratios of the reference Relafen$^{TM}$ Tablet to the test Osmetone$^{TM}$ Tablet were +5.01% and -0.83%, respectively, showing that the mean differences were satisfied the acceptance criteria within 20%. The results from analysis of variance for logtransformed AUC$_t$ and C$_{max}$ indicated that sequence effects between groups were not exerted and 90% confidence limits of the mean differences for AUC$_t$ and C$_{max}$ were located in ranges from log 0.80 to log 1.25, satisfying the acceptance criteria of the KFDA bioequivalence. The Osmetone$^{TM}$ Tablet as the test formulation was considered to be bioequivalant to the Relafen$^{TM}$ Tablet used as its reference formulation, based on AUC$_t$ and C$_{max}$ values.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Physical Medicine
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.435-443
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• 2010

Purpose : The goal of this study was to identify the effects of treadmill walking training (TW) and ergometer bicycle training (EB) on gait and balance in stroke patients. Methods : The subjects consisted of 42 stroke patients. They were randomly divided to two groups: TW(n=20) and EB(n=22). Each group trained along with the conventional physical therapy, three times a week for six weeks. The ability of gait was assessed by the 10m walk test and Timed Up and Go test(TUG). The ability of balance was assessed by Berg Balance Scale(BBS) and Balance Performance Monitor(BPM). Results : There was no significant difference between the 10m walking test and TUG groups, but there was a statistical difference between before and after the training for all groups. The result of BBS that assessed balance showed a significant reduction between before and after the training for all groups, but there was no difference between the two groups. While the two groups showed no difference in the BPM assessment, only the EB showed a significant improvement of before and after the training in each group. Conclusion : The outcomes suggest that stroke patients can improve their gait and balance performance through the TW and EB trainings. Although dynamic mean balance showed significance from EB, no significant difference was found between two groups. Even though it cannot be determined through this study which training group is more effective among the above mentioned two, it could be suggested that each training is effective to gait ability and the ability of balance of stroke patients.