• Health Policy and Management
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.82-98
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• 2007

This study aimed to analyze the factors that influence the job satisfaction of nurses involved in medical insurance reviews. The study involved a self-administered questionnaire survey which was conducted with to 297 nurses who were in charge of medical insurance reviews between April 10 and April 28, 2000. The average job satisfaction of the subjects was 3.04. The sub-items of job satisfaction were noted to be high for 'professional status'(3.79) and low for wage (2.46). The job satisfaction of subjects showed statistically significant differences with regard to education, career, and volume of service(p<0.05). The average job stress of subjects was 2.57. The sub-items of job stress included problems pertaining to human relationships problem(2.84), conflicts with doctors at work (2.79), and the burden of excessive workloads(2.79), in that order. Multiple regression analysis demonstrated that job satisfaction was significantly low when the job stress was higher. It also showed that the job satisfaction was significantly high as there was more frequency of judgements and higher education. These results suggest that the job stress of nurses involved in medical insurance reviews has a profound impact on their job satisfaction. Therefore, the efforts should be made to reduce their job stress. It may also be beneficial to reinforce the training with the doctors and nurses in order to improve their communication skills. Disseminating more information about insurance standards may also be considered.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.10 no.11
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• pp.3465-3472
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• 2009

The aims of this study is to medical record data warehouse which had been collected from hospital information systems. continuous patient 2,118 60.5%, informally patient 1,385 39.5%. In using survival factors sex, age, area, insurance, admission-course, medical treatment, out-patient lesson, out-patient form, conference diagnosis, operation, cancer, medical reservation. As a result of making a predictive modeling using the logistic regression, the fitness of the predictive modeling of informally patient was 66.0% and neural network, the predictive was 66.72% and CHAID, the predictive was 63.25%, which is a data mining. The expected modeling of the informally patients, the hospital through the continuous patient management and trust of hospital.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.451-457
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• 2001

This paper describes automated methods for the detection of lung nodules and their volume calculation on CT scans. Gray-level threshold methods were used to segment the thorax from the background and then the lung parenchymes from the thoracic wall and mediastinum. A scanning-ball algorithm was applied to more accurately delineate the lung boundaries, thereby incorporating peripheral nodules contiguous to pleural surface within the segmented lung parenchymes. The lesions which have the high gray value were extracted from the segmented lung parenchymes. The selected lesions include nodules, blood vessels and partial volume effects. The discriminating features such as size, solid-shape, average, standard deviation and correlation coefficient of selected lesions were used to distinguish true nodules from pseudo-lesions. Volume and circularity calculation were performed for each identified nodules. The identified nodules were sorted in descending order of the volume. These method were applied to 621 image slices of 19 cases. The sensitivity was 95% and there was no false-positive result.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.203-214
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• 2000

Health risk assessment is applied to streamlining LCA(Life Cycle Assessment) using Monte carlo simulation for probabilistic/stochastic exposure and risk distribution analysis caused by data variability and uncertainty. A case study was carried out to find benefits of this application. BTC(Benzene, Trichloroethylene, Carbon tetrachloride mixture alias) personal exposure cases were assumed as production worker(in workplace), manager(in office) and business man(outdoor). These cases were different from occupational retention time and exposure concentration for BTC consumption pattern. The result of cancer risk in these 3 scenario cases were estimated as $1.72E-4{\pm}1.2E+0$(production worker; case A), $9.62E-5{\pm}1.44E-5$(manger; case B), $6.90E-5{\pm}1.16E+0$(business man; case C), respectively. Portions of over acceptable risk 1.00E-4(assumed standard) were 99.85%, 38.89% and 0.61%, respectively. Estimated BTC risk was log-normal pattern, but some of distributions did not have any formal patterns. Except first impact factor(BTC emission quantity), sensitivity analysis showed that main effective factor was retention time in their occupational exposure sites. This case study is a good example to cover that LCA with probabilistic risk analysis tool can supply various significant information such as statistical distribution including personal/environmental exposure level, daily time activity pattern and individual susceptibility. Further research is needed for investigating real data of these input variables and personal exposure concentration and application of this study methodology.

• Food Science and Biotechnology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.600-604
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• 2007

In this study, we first prepared 3 kinds of powders with different molecular masses from the crude protein-bound polysaccharide extract of Agraricus blazei Murill through ultrafiltration, followed by spray-drying. Then, the antitumor activities of the powders were analyzed. Size exclusion chromatography coupled with a multi-angle laser-light-scattering system showed the 3 powders had the following molecular ranges: below 10 kDa (SD-1), 10 to 150 kDa (SD-2), and above 150 kDa (SD-3), representing peak molecular weights of $8.26{\times}10^3,\;9.65{\times}10^4$, and $5.94{\times}10^6\;g/mol$, respectively. All the powders stimulated macrophage RAW264.7 cells to produce nitric oxide, of which SD-2 and SD-3 were superior to the crude extract powder (CP-SD), while SD-1 showed the lowest activity. Similar results were found for their cytotoxicities against human cancer cell lines (A549, MCF-7, and AGS), where the highest activity was obtained with the SD-2 treatment for 72 hr at $1,000\;{\mu}g/mL$. The MCF-7 cell line was less sensitive to the powders than the other cells. From this research we found that ultrafiltration, in combination with spray-drying, is applicable for preparing protein-bound polysaccharide powders with higher antitumor activities.

• Korean Journal of Head & Neck Oncology
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.91-101
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• 1994

Nodular thyroid disease is a common clinical problem. The problem in clinical practice is to distinguish malignant or potentially malignant tumor from harmless nodules. The cases of thyroid nodule surgically managed at Department of General Surgery, Soon Chun Hyang Univ. Hospital during the period Jan. 1985 to July. 1992 were reviewed retrospectively. To assess method of distinguishing malignant from benign lesions of the thyroid gland, we reviewed 162 patients with thyroid nodule. There were 61(37.7%) malignant nodules and 101(62.3%) benign nodules. According to the review, distinguishing the benign from the malignant nodule with history, physical examination, clinical manifestation, and duration of illness was not suggested sufficiently. In ultrasonogram of 73 cases, 57.5% of nodules were solid, 20.6% were cystic, 21.9% were mixed solid and cystic. Of these, 28.5% of the operated solid lesions, 12.5% of the mixed lesions, and only 6.7% of the cystic lesions were malignant. Thyroid scanning of 82 cases revealed cold nodules in 60 patients(73.2%), of which 26 cases were malignant(36.6%) 137 patients underwent fine needle aspiration cytology(FNAC), and these results were as follow: sensitiviey was 70.6%, specificity was 93.0%, false-positive rate was 14.3%, and false-negative rate was 15.8%. 41 patients underwent frozen biopsy, and the results as follow: sensitivity was 80.0%, specificity was 89.7%. Neither scintigraphy nor ultrasonogram has sufficient specificity to distinguish benign from malignant nodule. But FNAC and frozen biopsy have sufficient accuracy to differentiate benign from malignant nodule. In the benign nodules, the most common type of operation was total lobectomy (60.4%). Of the malignant nodules, total thyroidectomy with or without modified radical neck dissection was performed in 30 cases(49.2%). We conclude that the single technique used to determine the differential diagnosis of a thyroid nodule are unrealiable. It is therefore essential to combine all avaiable clinical and laboratory information.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.18-33
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• 2002

This study was planned to investigate the difference in the choice of services between western and oriental medicine. Data were collected from 493 outpatients who visited the D hospital by structured questionnare. The results were as follows; The older aged groups, there were the more oriental medicine visitors, significantly Oriental medicine visitor had more experience to use the complementary food than western medicine visitor. In comparison of reason for service choice, the proportion of oriental medicine visitors was higher than western medicine visitor in considering of specialty of institution. In contrast, western medicine visitor had interest to 'newly-developed facility and equipment' and 'convenience and accessibility of service' as factor of service choice. In analysis of evaluation the service experiences, oriental medicine visitors evaluated the oriental medicine highly in 'therapeutic efficacy' and ' less side effect'. But western medicine visitor evaluated the western medicine highly in 'quick effect of therapy' and ' scientific apprach'. We concluded from result that there were difference in service choice behavior between western and oriental medicine visitor. We hope that these information will be applied to planning of consumer-oriented marketing strategy of hospital.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.67-75
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• 2002

The human complement receptor type 1 (CR 1, C3 b/C4b receptor) is a polymorphic membrane glycoprotein expressed on human erythrocytes, peripheral leukocytes, plasma and renal glomerular podocytes, which consists of transmembrane and cytoplasmic domains with 30 repeating homologous protein domains known as short consensus repeats (SCR). CR1 has been used as an inhibitor for inflammatory and immune system for the past several years. Recently; it is reported that CRl was found to suppress the hyper-acute rejection in xeno-transplantation and can be used to cure autoimmune diseases. A soluble form of CRl, called sCRl, is a recombinant CRl by cleaving the transmembrane domain at C-terminus and has been expressed in Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells. Several purification methods for sCR1 from CHO cells have been reported, but most of them require complicated steps at high cost. Moreover, such methods are mostly performed under the pH condition apt to denaturing sCR1 and causes sCRl losing its activity. We here report a rapid and efficient method to purify sCR1 from CHO cell. The new method consists of a two-stage of cell culture by cultivating cells in serum medium followed by serum-free medium, and a two-stage of column purification by means of heparin and gel filtration column chromatography. By using this novel method, sCR1 can be purified in a simple and effective way with high yield and purity, furthermore, the purified sCR1 was confirmed to retain its activity to suppress the complement activation in vivo and ex vivo.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.59-65
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• 2018

Background: We analyzed changes in the doses, structure volumes, and dose-volume histograms (DVHs) when data were transferred from one commercial treatment planning system (TPS) to another commercial TPS. Materials and Methods: A total of 22 volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT) plans for nasopharyngeal cancer were generated with the Eclipse system using 6-MV photon beams. The computed tomography (CT) images, dose distributions, and structure information, including the planning target volume (PTV) and organs at risk (OARs), were transferred from the Eclipse to the MRIdian system in digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) format. Thereafter, DVHs of the OARs and PTVs were generated in the MRIdian system. The structure volumes, dose distributions, and DVHs were compared between the MRIdian and Eclipse systems. Results and Discussion: The dose differences between the two systems were negligible (average matching ratio for every voxel with a 0.1% dose difference criterion = $100.0{\pm}0.0%$). However, the structure volumes significantly differed between the MRIdian and Eclipse systems (volume differences of $743.21{\pm}461.91%$ for the optic chiasm and $8.98{\pm}1.98%$ for the PTV). Compared to the Eclipse system, the MRIdian system generally overestimated the structure volumes (all, p < 0.001). The DVHs that were plotted using the relative structure volumes exhibited small differences between the MRIdian and Eclipse systems. In contrast, the DVHs that were plotted using the absolute structure volumes showed large differences between the two TPSs. Conclusion: DVH interpretation between two TPSs should be performed using DVHs plotted with the absolute dose and absolute volume, rather than the relative values.

• Journal of the Korean Dietetic Association
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.37-56
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• 2015

This study was conducted to develop job standards for clinical dietitian administering clinical nutrition therapy to diabetic patients in hospitals. Based on DACUM (Developing A Curriculum) analysis of 17 members including clinical dietitians, professors majoring in clinical nutrition and researchers, information on duties, tasks and task elements of clinical dietitians for diabetes care were derived and applied to diabetes mellitus-specific clinical nutrition care in hospitals for evaluation. The final developed job standards for clinical dietitians for diabetes care included four duties, 19 tasks and 56 task elements. The duties consisted of nutrition assessment, nutrition diagnosis, nutrition intervention, and nutrition monitoring evaluation. For application of diabetes mellitus-specific job standards in clinical nutrition care, 108 work activities were developed and classified into 90 basic and 18 recommended types. Performance rates of standardized jobs were 80.2% at nutrition assessment, 99.6% at nutrition diagnosis, 78.5% at nutrition intervention, and 32.9% at nutrition monitoring evaluation. These results can be applied as guidelines to implement jobs for diabetes mellitus-specific clinical nutrition services in clinical settings. In addition, they would be useful for education standards in educational institutions for education and training of clinical dietitian.