• Journal of dental hygiene science
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.1-7
• /
• 2007

This study aimed to provide basic information on dental hygienists' practicing the prevention of infections by figuring out their actual conditions in dental clinics. The subjects of the study were the dental hygienists who participated in the continuing medical education of Incheon & Gyeonggi-do association and Seoul city association in October and November 2005 and the self-administered surveys were used for the prevention of infections. The results were as below. 1. In terms of education experiences of infection prevention, those who answered "there were" were 72 persons (42.9%) and those who followed the educational route for infection prevention were "through the in-house education from the hospital" and they were 42 persons (58%), which were highest. 2. In terms of the injury experiences, those who answered "there were" were 147 persons (87.5%) and the number of annual injury out of 147 persons with injury experiences was 7.7 time. For the tools that were damaged, 125 persons (75%) damaged the "explorer," which was highest. 3. For the experiences of being infected with contagious diseases, those who answered "there were" were 6 persons (3.6%) and there were four persons for "hepatitis B", one person for "rubella" and one person for "TB." 4. The questions with high practice scores were as in the following: "2. I wash my hands after conducting medical examinations (1.86 points)," "7. I always close the lid of a shot of Novocain after doing local anesthesia (1.86 points)" and "20. I separate and collect the wastes and give them to those who treat accumulated materials (1.85 points)". Meanwhile, the questions with low practice scores were as below: "16. I change my medical gowns (doctor wears) once a day (0.24 point)" and "I wash my medical gowns every time after examining patients with contagious diseases (0.52 points)." 5. The question with high knowledge was as below: "1. The contagion during the dental treatment is determined by source of infection, infection methods, infection routes and the host that is prone to infection (0.95 point)" and the question with the lowest knowledge was "5. HBV(hepatitis B) is destroyed after adding 95oC of heat for more than 5 minutes (0.27 points)." 6. The question with the highest organization-related factors was "I am always ready to use a mask, gloves, etc. if necessary" (0.89 points)" and the question with the lowest score was "There is a guideline that I can refer when I am exposed to dangerous situations related to the contagion in my workplace (0.33 point)." 7. In terms of the equipment conditions of protectors in medical environments, 168 persons for (disposable) mask (100%), 167 persons for disposable gloves (Latex) (99.4%), which meant that most of them were equipped with them. On the contrary, 108 persons (64.3%) are equipped with the protectors for frontal faces, which is the lowest and 165 persons (98.2%) said that they had autoclave in their disinfecting and sterilizing devices.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.131-141
• /
• 2008

Purpose : To investigate the feasibility and accuracy of Proton Resonance Frequency (PRF) shift based magnetic resonance (MR) temperature mapping utilizing the self-developed center array-sequencing phase unwrapping (PU) method for non-invasive temperature monitoring. Materials and Methods : The computer simulation was done on the PU algorithm for performance evaluation before further application to MR thermometry. The MR experiments were conducted in two approaches namely PU experiment, and temperature mapping experiment based on the PU technique with all the image postprocessing implemented in MATLAB. A 1.5T MR scanner employing a knee coil with $T2^*$ GRE (Gradient Recalled Echo) pulse sequence were used throughout the experiments. Various subjects such as water phantom, orange, and agarose gel phantom were used for the assessment of the self-developed PU algorithm. The MR temperature mapping experiment was initially attempted on the agarose gel phantom only with the application of a custom-made thermoregulating water pump as the heating source. Heat was generated to the phantom via hot water circulation whilst temperature variation was observed with T-type thermocouple. The PU program was implemented on the reconstructed wrapped phase images prior to map the temperature distribution of subjects. As the temperature change is directly proportional to the phase difference map, the absolute temperature could be estimated from the summation of the computed temperature difference with the measured ambient temperature of subjects. Results : The PU technique successfully recovered and removed the phase wrapping artifacts on MR phase images with various subjects by producing a smooth and continuous phase map thus producing a more reliable temperature map. Conclusion : This work presented a rapid, and robust self-developed center array-sequencing PU algorithm feasible for the application of MR temperature mapping according to the PRF phase shift property.