• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.299-346
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• 2016

There were also various decisions made in medical area in 2015. In the case that an inmate in a sanatorium was injured due to the reason which can be attributable to the sanatorium and the social welfare foundation that operates the sanatorium request treatment of the patient, the court set the standard of fixation of a party in medical contract. In the case that the family of the patient who was declared brain dead required withdrawal of meaningless life sustaining treatment but the hospital rejected and continued the treatment, the court made a decision regarding chargeable fee for such treatment. When it comes to the eye brightening operation which received measure of suspension from the Ministry of Health and Welfare for the first time in February, 2011, because of uncertainty of its safety, the court did not accept the illegality of such operation itself, however, ordered compensation of the whole damage based on the violation of liability for explanation, which is the omission of explanation about the fact that the cost-effectiveness is not sure as it is still in clinical test stage. There were numerous cases that courts actively acknowledged malpractices; in the cases of paresis syndrome after back surgery, quite a few malpractices during the surgery were acknowledged by the court and in the case of nosocomial infection, hospital's negligence to cause such nosocomial infection was acknowledged by the court. There was a decision which acknowledged malpractice by distinguishing the duty of installation of emergency equipment according to the Emergency Medical Service Act and duty of emergency measure in emergency situations, and a decision which acknowledged negligence of a hospital if the hospital did not take appropriate measures, although it was a very rare disease. In connection with the scope of compensation for damage, there were decisions which comply with substantive truth such as; a court applied different labor ability loss rate as the labor ability loss rate decreased after result of reappraisal of physical ability in appeal compared to the one in the first trial, and a court acknowledged lower labor ability loss rate than the result of appraisal of physical ability considering the condition of a patient, etc. In the event of any damage caused by malpractice, in regard to whether there is a limitation on liability in fee charge after such medical malpractice, the court rejected the hospital's claim for setoff saying that if the hospital only continued treatments to cure the patient or prevent aggravation of disease, the hospital cannot charge Medical bills to the patient. In regard to the provision of the Medical Law that prohibit medical advertisement which was not reviewed preliminarily and punish the violation of such, a decision of unconstitutionality was made as it is a precensorship by an administrative agency as the deliberative bodies such as Korean Medical Association, etc. cannot be denied to be considered as administrative bodies. When it comes to the issue whether PRP treatment, which is commonly performed clinically, should be considered as legally determined uninsured treatment, the court made it clear that legally determined uninsured treatment should not be decided by theoretical possibility or actual implementation but should be acknowledged its medical safety and effectiveness and included in medical care or legally determined uninsured treatment. Moreover, court acknowledged the illegality of investigation method or process in the administrative litigation regarding evaluation of suitability of sanatorium, however, denied the compensation liability or restitution of unjust enrichment of the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service and the National Health Insurance Corporation as the evaluation agents did not cause such violation intentionally or negligently. We hope there will be more decisions which are closer to substantive truth through clear legal principles in respect of variously arisen issues in the future.

• Journal of Oral Medicine and Pain
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.441-447
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• 2007

Internal derangement of the temporomandibular joint(TMJ) is defined as an abnormal relationship of the articular disc to the condyle. Mandibular manipulation is one of the conservative treatments to be considered first to manage the patients with anterior disc displacement without reduction. Mandibular manipulation is used to increase articular mobility and to restore the displaced disc into an anatomically normal position. While Farrar's technique has been popularly used, Minagi et al., Mongini and Suarez introduced the manipulation technique conducted by the patients themselves. But there is no study on the efficacy of self-manipulation technique, comparing with conventional one. The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of the conventional and self-manipulation technique, which was modified to complement the previously described technique by Minagi et al., in the treatment of patients with anterior disc displacement without reduction. TMD patients, who visited Department of Oral Medicine of Seoul National University Dental Hospital from December, 2002 to November, 2004 and were diagnosed as anterior disc displacement without reduction by TMJ magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were enrolled. Conservative treatments including physical therapy, exercise, behavioral therapy, stabilization splint therapy, and manipulation therapy were done to every single patient until the symptomsimproved enough to discharge the patient. The charts were reviewed retrospectively according to the type of manipulation. In the results, patients whose maximum mouth opening was more than 40 mm was higher in the self-manipulation group(69.9%) than in the conventional manipulation group(42.9%). But difference between two groups was not significant. According to the fact that we decided to discharge the patients whentheir mouth opening increased to more than 40 mm and subjective symptoms such as pain and discomfort were improved as well, treatment period of discharged patients was significantly shorter in the self-manipulation group($29.2{\pm}12.3$ weeks) than in the conventional manipulation group ($61.0{\pm}38.0$ weeks) (p<0.01). In conclusion, in the treatment of TMD patients with anterior disc displacement without reduction, the self-manipulation technique which is performed by patients themselves is an effective treatment modality for increasing the range of mouth opening and shortening the total treatment period.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.7-13
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• 2012

Critical thinking is a essential competency for dental hygiene education and practice. The purpose of this study was to examine critical thinking disposition between groups classified by GPA score in two dental hygiene educational program. A total 252 dental hygiene students responded. The study extracted six dimensions(intellectual eagerness/curiosity, prudence, healthy skepticism, intellectual integrity, objectivity, self-confidence) derived from 27 items with the exception of systematicity using factor analysis. The mean score for critical thinking disposition was 3.47 on a 5 point scale. The result showed a statistically significant correlation critical thinking disposition and age. Multivariate analysis of covariance(MANCOVA) was used to compare six subscales between the three groups. MANCOVA results revealed that intellectual eagerness/curiosity for three groups were significantly different(Wilks's lamda=0.914, F(6, 24)=1.869), p=0.01, partial eta square=0.044). Multiple comparison for intellectual eagerness/curiosity by Scheffe's method showed differences between high score group and mid score group(p=0.027), high score group and low score group(p=0.002). In this study, academic achievement and critical thinking tends to show significant correlations is known. Critical thinking skills by examining the actual grade compares the difference in propensity scores according to a case study in intellectual curiosity, passion, and could tell the difference to appear.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.28-33
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• 2011

Purpose: Recognition of impending death is crucial not only for efficient communication with the caregiver of the patient, but also determination of the time to refer to a separate room. Current studies simply list the events 'that have already occurred' around 48 hours before the death. This study is to analyze the predictability of each event by comparing the time length from 'change' to death. Methods: Subjects included 160 patients who passed away in a palliative care unit in Incheon. The analysis was limited to 80 patients who had medical records for the last week of their lives. We determined 9 symptoms and 8 signs, and established the standard of 'significant change' of each event before death. Results: The most common symptom was increased sleeping (53.8%) and the most common sign was decreased blood pressure (BP) (87.5%). The mean time to death within 48 hours was 46.8% in the case of resting dyspnea, 13.6% in the ease of low oxygen saturation, and 36.9% in the case of decreased BP. The symptom(s) which had the highest positive predictive value (PV) for death within 48 hours was shown to be resting dyspnea (83%), whereas the combination of resting dyspnea and confusion/delirium (65%) had the highest negative PV. As for the most common signs before death within 48 hours, the positive PVs were more than 95%, and the negative PV was the highest when decreased BP and low oxygen saturation were combined. The difference in survival patterns between symptoms and signs was significant. Conclusion: The most reliable symptoms to predict the impending death are resting dyspnea and confusion/delirium, and decline of oxygen saturation and BP are the reliable signs to predict the event.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.104-111
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• 2009

Purpose: Osteocalcin is also known as the bone gamma-carboxyglutamic acid (Gla) protein (BGP), is noncollagenous bone protein synthesized by osteoblasts. Serum concentrations of Osteocalcin have been used as a biochemical marker of bone turnover. The reference intervals of Osteocalcin is categorized by kit corporation according to the age. However, each laboratory should establish its own reference intervals. In this study, the variation in the serum Osteocalcin level were used to find actual standard age-specific Osteocalcin reference intervals. Materials and Methods: We have selected 864 healthy females aged 20~80 years who visited a health promotion center between Aug. 2007 and Sep. 2008. The Osteocalcin IRMA Kit (OSTEO-RIACT, CIS Bio international, Gif-sur-Yvette, France) was used for the quantification. Each results were analyzed with the SPSS 12.0 statistical software. Results: The analyzed reference intervals of Osteocalcin by using Hoffmann method are from 8.8~39.4 ng/mL to 6.3~28.8 ng/mL for the case of the age from 20 to 30, from 7.7~31.9 ng/mL to 5.9~17.4 ng/mL for the case of the age from 31 to 40, and from 8.0~36.0 ng/mL to 5.5~20.1 ng/mL for the case of the age from 41 to 50, and from 8.0~50.5 ng/mL to 6.7~27.0 ng/mL for the case of the age from 51 to 60, and from 12.9~55.9 ng/mL to 7.5~27.5 ng/mL for the case of the age from 61 to 80. Reference intervals of Osteocalcin were not in agreement with those recommended by the manufacturers. Conclusions: Osteocalcin is used as an indication of metabolic bone diseases. So in our study we wanted to provide reference intervals of Osteocalcin that can be useful to a clinical decisions. Also, previous reference intervals should not be re-used and new intervals should be set by continuous analyzing.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.181-189
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• 2010

Purpose: Recently, health policy making is increasingly based on evidence. Therefore, Korean Terminal Cancer Patient Information System (KTCPIS) was developed to meet such need. We aimed to report its developmental process and statistics from 6 months data. Methods: Items for KTCPIS were developed through the consultation with practitioners. E-Velos web-based clinical trial management system was used as a technical platform. Data were collected for patients who were registered to 34 inpatient palliative care services, designated by Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Family Affairs, from $1^{st}$ of January to $30^{th}$ of June in 2009. Descriptive statistics were used for the analysis. Results: From the nationally representative set of 2,940 patients, we obtained the following results. Mean age was $64.8{\pm}12.9$ years, and 56.6% were male. Lung cancer (18.0%) was most common diagnosis. Only 50.3% of patients received the confirmation of terminal diagnosis by two or more physicians, and 69.7% had an insight of terminal diagnosis at the time of admission. About half of patients were admitted to the units on their own without any formal referral. Average and worst pain scores were significantly reduced after 1 week when compared to those at the time of admission. 73.4% faced death in the units, and home-discharge comprised only 13.3%. Mean length of stay per admission was $20.2{\pm}21.2$ days, with median value of 13. Conclusion: Nationally representative data on the characteristics of patients and their caregiver, and current practice of service delivery in palliative care units were obtained through the operation of KTCPIS.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.214-220
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• 2004

Purpose: As for the malignant bowel obstruction of terminal cancer patient, a prognosis is relatively bad. Physicians consider palliative procedures or surgery for the quality of life, but sometimes it is hard to decide. After diagnosis of a malignant bowel obstruction in terminal cancer patients, we investigated the clinical characteristics, the prognostic factors and the survival of patients with palliative procedures or surgery. Methods: we retrospectively reviewed the medical records in 40 malignant bowel obstruction patients who had been diagnosed as terminal cancer from May in 2002 to May in 2004. Results: There were 21 males (53%) and 19 females (47%), and median age of patients was $64.1{\pm}1.58$ years. The most common cause of malignant bowel obstruction was colorectal cancer (18 patients, 45%), followed by stomach cancer (11, 28%), pancreatic cancer (4, 10%), others (7, 19%). Metastases were carcinomatosis peritonei (14 patients, 35%), liver (13, 33%). During a bowel obstruction, symptoms were vomiting (15 patients, 38%), abdominal pain (10, 25%), constipation (6, 15%), abdominal distension (5, 13%). Performance status (ECOG) was 2 score (16 patients, 40%), 3 score (20, 50%), 4 score (4, 10%). Palliative procedure group were 30 patients, the others 10. Median survival in palliative procedure group was 142 days, that of no palliation group 30. Median survival time of palliative procedure group from palliative procedures or surgery were significantly higher than that of no palliation group from diagnosis of malignant bowel obstruction. Prognostic factors of palliative procedure group were PS, site of obstruction and primary cancer. Median survival in PS 2, lower GI obstruction and colorectal cancer was higher than PS 3, upper GI obstruction and others, respectively. Conclusion: we recommend aggressively palliative procedures or surgery in malignant bowel obstruction patients diagnosed with terminal cancer if palliative procedures or surgery could be performed effectively.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.1277-1283
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• 1998

Background : Surgical tracheostomy(ST) is usually performed by surgeons in operating room. For a patient with mechanical ventilation, however, transportation to operating room for ST could be dangerous for patients. In addition, ST is often delayed due to unavailability of operating room or surgeon. Percutaneous dilatational tracheostomy(PDT), although novel in Korea, is gaining popularity as a bedside procedure in the hospitals of western countries. We evaluated the technical ease and safety of PDT in comparison with ST. Method : Thirty-eight patients in medical intensive care unit (ICU) who were either under mechanical ventilation for more than 7 days or required airway protection, were randomly assigned to ST(18 patients) or PDT(20 patients). Between two groups, there was no significant clinical difference except that female to male ratio was higher in the ST group. ST was performed by second year residents of the department of otolaryngology while PDT was performed by third grade medical resident and pulmonologist under bronchoscopic guide using Ciaglia Percutaneous Tracheostomy Set(Cook Critical Care, Bloomington, USA) in medical ICU. The following factors were compared between two groups : number of delayed cases after the decision for tracheostomy, procedural time, complications related to tracheostomy. Results : Delayed cases were 11 in ST group and 3 in PDT group (P<0.05). Procedural time was significantly shorter in PDT group ($15.6{\pm}7.1min$) than in ST group ($29.1{\pm}11.6min$, P<0.0001). Complications related to tracheostomy occurred in 5 cases in ST group : accidental decannulation (1), subcutaneous emphysema (2) and minor bleeding (2), and in 4 cases in PDT group : minor bleeding (2), subcutaneous emphysema (1) and premature extubation (1) (P>0.05). Conclusion : Since percutaneous dilatational tracheostomy was easy to practice and its complications were not different from surgical tracheostomy, PDT can be a useful bedside procedure for mechanically ventilated patients.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.30 no.10
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• pp.1210-1219
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• 2001

Introduction : The purpose of this study was to analyze the safety, pullout strength and radiographic characteristics of unicortical and bicortical screws of cervical facet within cadaveric specimens and evaluate the influence of level of training on the positioning of these screws. Methods : Twenty-one cadavers, mean 78.9 years of age, underwent bilateral placement of 3.5mm AO lateral mass screw from C3-C6(n=168) using a slight variation of the Magerl technique. Intraoperative imaging was not used. The right side(unicortical) utilized only 14mm screws(effective length of 11mm) while on the left side to determine the length of the screw after the ventral cortex had been drilled. Three spine surgeons(attending, fellow, chief resident) with varying levels of spine training performed the procedure on seven cadavers each. All spines were harvested and lateral radiographs were taken. Individual cervical vertebrae were carefully dissected and then axial radiographs were taken. The screws were evaluated clinically and radiographically for their safety. Screws were graded clinically for their safety with respect to the spinal cord, facet joint, nerve root and vertebral artery. The grades consisted of the following categories : "satisfactory", "at risk" and "direct injury". Each screw was also graded according to its zone placement. Screw position was quantified by measuring a sagittal angle from the lateral radiograph and an axial angle from the axial radiograph. Pull-out force was determined for all screws using a material testing machine. Results : Dissection revealed that fifteen screws on the left side actually had only unicortical and not bicortical purchase as intended. The majority of screws(92.8%) were satisfactory in terms of safety. There were no injuries to the spinal cord. On the right side(unicortical), 98.9% of the screws were "satisfactory" and on the left side(bicortical) 68.1% were "satisfactory". There was a 5.8% incidence of direct arterial injury and a 17.4% incidence of direct nerve root injury with the bicortical screws. There were no "direct injuries" with the unicortical screws for the nerve root or vertebral artery. The unicortical screws had a 21.4% incidence of direct injury of the facet joint, while the bicortical screws had a 21.7% incidence. The majority of "direct injury" of bicortical screws were placed by the surgeon with the least experience. The performance of the resident surgeon was significantly different from the attending or fellow(p<0.05) in terms of safety of the nerve root and vertebral artery. The attending's performance was significantly better than the resident or fellow(p<0.05) in terms of safety of the facet joint. There was no relationship between the safety of a screw and its zone placement. The axial deviation angle measured $23.5{\pm}6.6$ degrees and $19.8{\pm}7.9$ degrees for the unicortical and bicortical screws, respectively. The resident surgeon had a significantly lower angle than the attending or fellow(p<0.05). The sagittal angle measured $66.3{\pm}7.0$ degrees and $62.3{\pm}7.9$ degrees for the unicortical and bicortical screws, respectively. The attending had a significantly lower sagittal angle than the fellow or resident(p<0.05). Thirty-three screws that entered the facet joint were tested for pull-out strength but excluded from the data because they were not lateral mass screws per-se and had deviated substantially from the intended final trajectory. The mean pull-out force for all screws was $542.9{\pm}296.6N$. There was no statistically significant difference between the pull-out force for unicortical($519.9{\pm}286.9N$) and bicortical($565.2{\pm}306N$) screws. There was no significant difference in pull-out strengths with respect to zone placement. Conclusion : It is our belief that the risk associated with bicortical purchase mandates formal spine training if it is to be done safely and accurately. Unicortical screws are safer regardless of level of training. It is apparent that 14mm lateral mass screws placed in a supero-lateral trajectory in the adult cervical spine provide an equivalent strength with a much lower risk of injury than the longer bicortical screws placed in a similar orientation.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.109-131
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• 2014

As the demand of nuclear power plant equipment is continuously growing worldwide, the importance of handling nuclear strategic materials is also increasing. While the number of cases submitted for the exports of nuclear-power commodity and technology is dramatically increasing, preadjudication (or prescreening to be simple) of strategic materials has been done so far by experts of a long-time experience and extensive field knowledge. However, there is severe shortage of experts in this domain, not to mention that it takes a long time to develop an expert. Because human experts must manually evaluate all the documents submitted for export permission, the current practice of nuclear material export is neither time-efficient nor cost-effective. Toward alleviating the problem of relying on costly human experts only, our research proposes a new system designed to help field experts make their decisions more effectively and efficiently. The proposed system is built upon case-based reasoning, which in essence extracts key features from the existing cases, compares the features with the features of a new case, and derives a solution for the new case by referencing similar cases and their solutions. Our research proposes a framework of case-based reasoning system, designs a case-based reasoning system for the control of nuclear material exports, and evaluates the performance of alternative keyword extraction methods (full automatic, full manual, and semi-automatic). A keyword extraction method is an essential component of the case-based reasoning system as it is used to extract key features of the cases. The full automatic method was conducted using TF-IDF, which is a widely used de facto standard method for representative keyword extraction in text mining. TF (Term Frequency) is based on the frequency count of the term within a document, showing how important the term is within a document while IDF (Inverted Document Frequency) is based on the infrequency of the term within a document set, showing how uniquely the term represents the document. The results show that the semi-automatic approach, which is based on the collaboration of machine and human, is the most effective solution regardless of whether the human is a field expert or a student who majors in nuclear engineering. Moreover, we propose a new approach of computing nuclear document similarity along with a new framework of document analysis. The proposed algorithm of nuclear document similarity considers both document-to-document similarity (${\alpha}$) and document-to-nuclear system similarity (${\beta}$), in order to derive the final score (${\gamma}$) for the decision of whether the presented case is of strategic material or not. The final score (${\gamma}$) represents a document similarity between the past cases and the new case. The score is induced by not only exploiting conventional TF-IDF, but utilizing a nuclear system similarity score, which takes the context of nuclear system domain into account. Finally, the system retrieves top-3 documents stored in the case base that are considered as the most similar cases with regard to the new case, and provides them with the degree of credibility. With this final score and the credibility score, it becomes easier for a user to see which documents in the case base are more worthy of looking up so that the user can make a proper decision with relatively lower cost. The evaluation of the system has been conducted by developing a prototype and testing with field data. The system workflows and outcomes have been verified by the field experts. This research is expected to contribute the growth of knowledge service industry by proposing a new system that can effectively reduce the burden of relying on costly human experts for the export control of nuclear materials and that can be considered as a meaningful example of knowledge service application.