• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.1082-1090
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• 2009

Peak expiratory flow rate(PEF) is a very important diagnostic parameter obtained from the forced vital capacity(FVC) test. The expiratory flow rate increases during the short initial time period and may cause measurement error in PEF particularly due to non-ideal dynamic characteristic of the transducer. The present study evaluated the initial rise slope($S_r$) on the flow rate signal to compensate the transducer output data. The 26 standard signals recommended by the American Thoracic Society(ATS) were generated and flown through the velocity-type respiratory air flow transducer with simultaneously acquiring the transducer output signal. Most PEF and the corresponding output($N_{PEF}$) were well fitted into a quadratic equation with a high enough correlation coefficient of 0.9997. But only two(ATS#2 and 26) signals resulted significant deviation of $N_{PEF}$ with relative errors>10%. The relationship between the relative error in $N_{PEF}$ and $S_r$ was found to be linear, based on which $N_{PEF}$ data were compensated. As a result, the 99% confidence interval of PEF error was turned out to be approximately 2.5%, which was less than a quarter of the upper limit of 10% recommended by ATS. Therefore, the present compensation technique was proved to be very accurate, complying the international standards of ATS, which would be useful to calibrate respiratory air flow transducers.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.314-320
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• 2021

With the increasing age of motherhood in recent years, attributed to late marriages due to social or environmental factors, the Down's syndrome screening test using biochemical markers has become essential for pregnant women. The process of diagnosing Down's syndrome pregnancy in the high-risk group subjects involves chromosomal analysis, which is performed on samples obtained through invasive procedures such as chorionic biopsy or amniotic fluid. Thus, to reduce unnecessary invasive tests and lower the risk to mother and fetus, it is important to identify a screening test with low risk and high Down's syndrome detection rate. Recently, as the average age of mothers has increased, numerous inspection agencies have classified high-risk mothers as women over the age of 35 years. This study evaluated a total of 36,436 pregnant women aged between 17 to 46 years, and who requested prenatal screening at an inspection agency in Yongin in 2018. Test (13,690 people) Four tests were conducted by applying the time-resolved fluoroimmunoassay method using the direct sandwich and indirect sandwich technology, and the immunoassay method using the sandwich method. We aimed to confirm the difference in positivity rate with increasing age of the subjects. We believe that in future, data obtained from this study will be very useful for the prevention and treatment of Down's syndrome risk at varied inspection institutions, and for prospective mothers.