• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.127-132
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• 2006

Background and Objectives : Functional dysphonia is a voice disturbance in the absence of structural or neurologic laryngeal pathology characterized by voluntary misuse of laryngeal muscles. The present report reviews clinical characteristics of 25 patients with functional dysphonia. Materials and Method : We analyzed medical records, perceptual and acoustic analysis of voice samples, aerodynamic studies and laryngoscopy. Results : There was no sex or age predilection. Eighty four percent of patients presented sudden onset of symptoms and 76% had specific events at the onset. Most patients showed breathy or strained voice and various degree of vocal fold insufficiency with supraglottic compensatory contractions. Acoustic analysis revealed non-diagnostic, but mean flow rate was lower than normal in all cases. All patients responded to voice therapy except for 4 patients who were tort to follow up. Mean number of voice therapy sessions required to get responses is 1.9 sessions. Conclusion : We concluded that patients with functional dysphonia responded very well to short-term voice therapy and should be included in differential diagnosis in patients with dysphonia cannot be explained by structural or neurologic etiology.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.504-512
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• 1994

Background: It is well known that severe hypoxemia is often associated with liver cirrhosis without preexisting cardiac or pulmonary diseases. Pulmonary vascular impairments, more specifically, intrapulmonary shunting have been considered as a major mechanism. Intrapulmonary shunting arises from pulmonary vascular dilatation at the precapillary level or direct arteriovenous communication and has relationship with the characteristic skin findings of spider angioma. However, these results are mainly from Western countries where alcoholic and primary biliary cirrhosis are dominant cuases of cirrhosis. It is uncertain that the same is true in viral hepatitiss associated liver cirrhosis, which is dominant causes of liver cirrhosis in Korea. We investigated the incidences of hypoxemia and orthodeoxia in Korean cirrhotic patients dominantly composed of postnecrotic cirrhosis and the significance of intrapulmonary shunting as the suggested mechanism of hypoxemia, Method: We performed the arterial blood gas analysis separately both at the supine and errect position in 48 stable cirrhotic patients without the evidences of severe complications such as ascites, variceal bleeding, and hepatic coma. According to the results of arterial blood gas analysis, all patients were divided into hypoxemic and normoxemic group. In each group, pulmonary function test and Tc-99m-MAA whole body scan were performed. The shunting fraction was calculated based on the fact that the sum of cerebral and bilateral renal blood flow is 32% of the systemic blood flow. Results: The hypoxemia of $PaO_2$ less than 80 mmHg was observed in 9 patients(18.8%) and Orthodeoxia more than 10 mmHg was observed in 8 patients(16.7%). But there was no patient with significant hypoxemia of $PaO_2$ less than 60 mmHg. $PaO_2$ was significantly decreased in the patients with spider angioma than the pathients without spider angioma and showed no correlation with the serologic type and severities of liver function test findings. Any parameters of pulmonary function test did not demonstrate the difference between normoxemic and hypoxemic group. But hypoxemic group showed significantly increased shunt fraction of $11.4{\pm}4.1%$ than normoxemic group of $4.1{\pm}2.0%$ (p<0.05). Conclusions: Hypoxemia is not infrequently observed complication in liver cirrhosis and intrapulmonary shunting is suggested to p1ay a major ro1e in the development of hypxemia. But there was no great likelihood of clinically significant hypoxemia in our domestic cirrhotic patients predominantly composed of postnecrotic type.