• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.53 no.1
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• pp.37-44
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• 2020

Objectives: This study investigated the effects of comorbid sleep disorders (SD) on the incidence of cardiovascular complications among newly-diagnosed hypertension (HTN) patients. Methods: As study population, 124 057 newly-diagnosed essential HTN patients aged 30 or older, without cardiovascular complications at diagnosis with HTN, were selected from the National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort. The incidence of cardiovascular complications was calculated, Cox proportional-hazards regression model was used to analyze the risk of complications, and the population attributable fraction (PAF) for cardiovascular complications of having comorbid SD at HTN diagnosis was calculated. Results: Over 10 years, 32 275 patients (26.0%) developed cardiovascular complications. In HTN patients with comorbid SD at diagnosis of HTN, the incidence of cardiovascular complications (78.3/1000 person-years; 95% confidence interval [CI], 75.8 to 80.9) was higher than in those without comorbid SD (58.6/1000 person-years; 95% CI, 57.9 to 59.3) and the risk of cardiovascular complications was 1.21 times higher (95% CI, 1.17 to 1.25), adjusting for age, gender, income, area of residence, and comorbid diabetes mellitus. The PAF of having comorbid SD at diagnosis of HTN for the incidence of cardiovascular complications was 2.07% (95% CI, 1.69 to 2.44). Conclusions: Newly-diagnosed essential HTN patients aged 30 or older who had comorbid SD at the time of their HTN diagnosis had a higher incidence of cardiovascular complications than those without comorbid SD. Age, gender, income, area of residence, and comorbid diabetes mellitus had a significant effect on the incidence of cardiovascular complications. Approximately 2% of cardiovascular complications were found to occur due to the presence of SD.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.80-86
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• 2006

The challenge of accurately predicting eyelid height after blepharoptosis surgery is well-known problem even in complete hands. From May 1988 to December 2004, authors reviewed 182 cases(240 eyes) of blepharoptosis corrected by frontalis muscle transfer or levator resection and had experienced 10 cases(15 eyelids) of early reoperation around the first week. The period from initial operation to reoperation are between six to eight days and mean period is seven days. Initial operative procedures were frontalis muscle transfer in 3 cases(4 eyelids) and levator resection in 7 cases(11 eyelids). Follow up period ranged from 6 months to 16 years. Early adjusting surgery was performed in accordance with the preoperative and postoperative degree of ptosis of patient and by previous operative technique. The results are evaluated according to the criteria of an ideal correction by Souther and Jordan. Seven patients have good or satisfactory results(less than 1 mm asymmetry, good in 5 cases and satisfactory in 2 cases). Three patients(5 eyelids) recorded as poor results(more than 2 mm asymmetry). Even if early or late reoperation can be effective in correcting unsatisfactory results after correction of blepharoptosis, early reoperation may lead to better results than late reoperation because early reoperation can offer a reduction in time to final result, the ease with which it is performed and potential cost savings. The experience of surgeon is also important factor for the treat ment of recurred blepharoptosis.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.321-328
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• 2007

Objectives : The aim of this study was to evaluate the roles of cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, tuberculosis, and their interactions in the risk of lung cancer in a Korean cohort. Methods : The study subjects comprised 13,150 males and females aged above 20 years old. During the follow up period from 1993 to 2002, 79 lung cancer cases were identified by the central cancer registry and the national death certificate database. Information on cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption and the history of physician-diagnosed tuberculosis was obtained by interview. Indirect chest X-ray findings were also evaluated to ascertain tuberculosis cases. Cox proportional hazard models were used to estimate relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) after adjusting for age and gender. Results : Cigarette smoking was statistically significantly associated with an increased risk of lung cancer [for current smokers, RR = 2.33 (95% CI = 1.23 - 4.42) compared to non-smokers]. After further adjustment for cigarette smoking, both alcohol consumption and tuberculosis showed no statistically significant association with the risk of lung cancer [for current drinkers, RR = 0.80 (95% CI = 0.48 - 1.33) compared to non-drinkers] [for tuberculosis cases, RR = 1.17 (95% CI = 0.58 - 2.36) compared to non-cases]. There was no statistically significant interaction between cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption (p-interaction = 0.38), or cigarette smoking and tuberculosis (p-interaction = 0.74). Conclusions : Although cigarette smoking was confirmed as a risk factor of lung cancer in this cohort study, this study suggests that alcohol consumption and tuberculosis may not be associated with the risk of lung cancer.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.22-30
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• 2015

Background: This study investigated the health behaviors of North Korean, multicultural, and Korean family adolescents in Korea. Methods: The study subjects were from the Korea youth risk behavior web-based survey (2011-2013) dataset. We identified 1,954 multicultural family adolescents and twice as many Korean family adolescents. Frequency analysis was used to assess nativity and nationality of the parents, and the chi-square test was used to compare the general characteristics and health behavior of the multicultural and Korean families. Conditional multiple logistic regression was used to compare health behavior between multicultural and Korean families. Results: Of the 5,862 multicultural and Korean family adolescents, current smoking in North Korean family adolescents was higher than Korean family adolescents (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 2.32; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.60-3.35) after adjusting for sex, school year, perceived school record, family structure, father's education, mother's education, perceived economic status, place of residence, and survey year. A high drinking rate was significantly greater in North Korean family adolescents compared to Korean family adolescents (aOR, 2.94; 95% CI, 1.89-4.57). Odds ratios for sufficient physical activity of vigorous intensity (aOR, 1.82; 95% CI, 1.31-2.54) were significantly higher in North Korean family adolescents than in Korean family adolescents. Fast food intake (aOR, 1.96; 95% CI, 1.34-2.86) was significantly higher in North Korean family adolescents compared to Korean family adolescents. Conclusion: There were differences in health behavior between North Korean, multicultural, and Korean family adolescents. Further studies are needed to investigate the factors associated with these differences.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.2124-2148
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• 2017

Accurate facial expression recognition (FER) requires reliable signal filtering and the effective feature extraction. Considering these requirements, this paper presents a novel approach for FER which is robust to noise. The main contributions of this work are: First, to preserve texture details in facial expression images and remove image noise, we improved the anisotropic diffusion filter by adjusting the diffusion coefficient according to two factors, namely, the gray value difference between the object and the background and the gradient magnitude of object. The improved filter can effectively distinguish facial muscle deformation and facial noise in face images. Second, to further improve robustness, we propose a new feature descriptor based on a combination of the Histogram of Oriented Gradients with the Canny operator (Canny-HOG) which can represent the precise deformation of eyes, eyebrows and lips for FER. Third, Canny-HOG's block and cell sizes are adjusted to reduce feature dimensionality and make the classifier less prone to overfitting. Our method was tested on images from the JAFFE and CK databases. Experimental results in L-O-Sam-O and L-O-Sub-O modes demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method. Meanwhile, the recognition rate of this method is not significantly affected in the presence of Gaussian noise and salt-and-pepper noise conditions.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.204-213
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• 2019

Background In implant-based breast reconstruction, acellular dermal matrix (ADM) is essential for supporting the inferolateral pole. Recent studies have compared non-sterilized freeze-dried ADM and sterilized pre-hydrated ADM, but have not assessed whether differences were attributable to factors related to sterile processing or packaging. This study was conducted to compare the clinical outcomes of breast reconstruction using two types of sterile-processed ADMs. Methods Through a retrospective chart review, we analyzed 77 consecutive patients (85 breasts) who underwent tissue expander/implant breast reconstruction with either freeze-dried ADM (35 breasts) or pre-hydrated ADM (50 breasts) from March 2016 to February 2018. Demographic variables, postoperative outcomes, and operative parameters were compared between freeze-dried and pre-hydrated ADM. Biopsy specimens were obtained for histologic analysis. Results We obtained results after adjusting for variables found to be significant in univariate analyses. The total complication rate for freeze-dried and pre-hydrated ADMs was 25.7% and 22.0%, respectively. Skin necrosis was significantly more frequent in the freeze-dried group than in the pre-hydrated group (8.6% vs. 4.0%, P=0.038). All other complications and operative parameters showed no significant differences. In the histologic analysis, collagen density, inflammation, and vascularity were higher in the pre-hydrated ADM group (P=0.042, P=0.006, P=0.005, respectively). Conclusions There are limited data comparing the outcomes of tissue expander/implant breast reconstruction using two types of sterile-processed ADMs. In this study, we found that using pre-hydrated ADM resulted in less skin necrosis and better integration into host tissue. Pre-hydrated ADM may therefore be preferable to freeze-dried ADM in terms of convenience and safety.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1995 no.11
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• pp.216-218
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• 1995

A new atrial pressures balancing method for moving actuator total artificial heart(TAH) without an extra compliance chamber is developed. The structural characteristics of the pendulous moving actuator have made it possible to compensate the left and right pump output difference by utilizing the interventricular air space as an internal compliance chamber in a pump housing. Furthermore, the balancing performance is increased through the improvement of the flexibility of part of the polyurathane housing. However, the increase of the flexibility of the housing causes a little loss of the cardiac output due to the reduction of active filling performance. In this paper, a good condition between the balance and pump output performance is evaluated by adjusting the air volume in the interventricular space through a series of in vitro experiment.

• Annals of Clinical Neurophysiology
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.15-20
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• 2014

Background: Triphasic waves are one of the electroencephalographic patterns that can be usually seen in metabolic encephalopathy. The aim of this study is to compare the clinical and electrophysiologic profiles between patients with and without triphasic waves in metabolic encephalopathy, and reassess the significance of triphasic waves in metabolic encephalopathy. Methods: We recruited 127 patients with metabolic encephalopathy, who were admitted to our hospital. We divided these admitted patients into two groups; those with and without triphasic waves. We analyzed the difference of duration of hospitalization, mortality rate during admission, Glasgow Coma Scale, severity of electroencephalographic alteration, and presence of acute symptomatic seizures between these two groups. Results: Of the 127 patients with metabolic encephalopathy, we excluded 67 patients who did not have EEG, and 60 patients finally met the inclusion criteria for this study. Patients with triphasic waves had more severe electroencephalographic alterations, lower Glasgow Coma Scale, and more acute symptomatic seizures than those without triphasic waves. After adjusting the clinical variables, Glasgow Coma Scale and acute symptomatic seizures were only significantly different between patients with and without triphasic waves. Conclusions: We demonstrated that patients with triphasic waves in metabolic encephalopathy had more significant impairment of the brain function.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.648-655
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• 2009

Peripheral neuropathy is a disease of multiple Peripheral nerves. Tingling, pins-and needles, numbness, burning and raw sensation are symptoms of peripheral neuropathy. These symptoms are frequently complained by patients who suffered from obstructive syndrome of Ki and blood (痺證). This case was reported to evaluate the effects of oriental medicine therapy on a patient with obstructive syndrome of Ki and blood (痺證). The subject was a female patient who had obstructive syndrome of Ki and blood (痺證). She complained of calf pain, cold sense, walking discomfort, insomnia, dyspepsia, anorexia etc. We administered the medicine with dispeling the cold pathogenic factor (寒邪), adjusting the constructive and defensive energy (調營衛), tonifying the Ki and blood (補氣血) by stage. After the treatment, the symptoms improved. This case suggests that oriental medicine therapy can be applicable to improve in symptoms with Peripheral neuropathy.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.123-130
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• 2000

Fuzzy control is proposed to regulate cutting force in turning operations under varying cutting conditions. The traditional linear controllers based on crisp mathematical model cannot effectively control cutting force becasue of the nonlinear dynamics of turning operations. The proposed fuzzy controller is based on operator experience and expert knowledge. The membership functions for the inputs and the output of the controller are designed. Cutting force is regulated by adjusting feedrate according to the variation of cutting conditions. The performance of the proposed controller is evaluated by experiments. The results of experiments show that the proposed fuzzy controller has a good cutting force regulation over a wide range of cutting conditions.