• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.57 no.2
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• pp.180-182
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• 2004

A Case of Pellagra Induced by Isoniazid during Treatment of Pulmonary Tuberculosis Pellagra is a disease caused by a deficiency of nicotinic acid or niacin. It is mostly found among people eating corn-based diets in parts of China, Africa and India. It is also induced by drugs, such as isoniazid or 5-fluorouracil. Isoniazid inhibits the conversion of tryptophan to niacin and may induce pellagra, particularly in poorly nourished patients. Pellagra should be suspected whenever tuberculous patients under the treatment with isoniazid develop mental, neurological or gastrointestinal symptoms, even in the absence of typical skin changes. Herein, our experienced of a case of pellagra induced by isoniazid during treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis is reported. The patient was referred due to a skin rash and drowsy mental status. Her skin lesion developed during treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis. Her symptoms were improved after discontinuation of antituberculous agents and on the administration of nicotinamide.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.74 no.3
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• pp.120-123
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• 2013

Inhalation of toxic gases can lead to pneumonitis. It has been known that methane gas intoxication causes loss of consciousness or asphyxia. There is, however, a paucity of information about acute pulmonary toxicity from methane gas inhalation. A 21-year-old man was presented with respiratory distress after an accidental exposure to methane gas for one minute. He came in with a drowsy mentality and hypoxemia. Mechanical ventilation was applied immediately. The patient's symptoms and chest radiographic findings were consistent with acute pneumonitis. He recovered spontaneously and was discharged after 5 days without other specific treatment. His pulmonary function test, 4 days after methane gas exposure, revealed a restrictive ventilatory defect. In conclusion, acute pulmonary injury can occur with a restrictive ventilator defect after a short exposure to methane gas. The lung injury was spontaneously resolved without any significant sequela.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.382-387
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• 2011

Whether a person is feeling sleepy or reasonably awake is important safety information in many areas, such as humans operating in traffic or in heavy industry. The changes of body signals have been mostly researched by looking at electroencephalogram(EEG) signals but more and more other medical signals are being examined. In our study, an electrocardiogram(ECG) signal is measured at a sampling rate of 100 Hz and used to try to distinguish the possible differences in signal between the two states: awake and drowsy. Practical tests are conducted using a wireless sensor node connected to a wearable ECG sensor, and an ECG signal is transmitted wirelessly to a base station connected to a server PC. Through the QRS complex in the ECG analysis it is possible to obtain much information that is helpful for diagnosing different types of cardiovascular disease. A program is made with MATLAB for digital signal filtering and graphing as well as recognizing the parts of the QRS complex within the signal. Drowsiness detection is performed by evaluating the R peaks, R-R interval, interval between R and S peaks and the duration of the QRS complex..

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.885-892
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• 2016

Few studies have reported the effects of traditional Korean medical (TKM) therapy in patients with traumatic brain hemorrhage. The patient was a 93-year-old female who was unconscious after a traumatic intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) and was not a candidate for any surgical treatment because of her age. We treated her with acupuncture and herbal medicine. After 28 days of treatment, we observed an improvement in consciousness on the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) and in other symptoms (aphasia, weakness in both legs, and headache).

• Journal of Chest Surgery
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.234-236
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• 2013

A 42-year-old woman with short-term memory loss visited Gangnam Severance Hospital, and her chest X-ray and computed tomography revealed a right anterior mediastinal mass. On hospital day two, she suddenly presented personality changes and a drowsy mental status, so she required ventilator care in the intensive care unit. She underwent thymectomy, and was pathologically diagnosed with thymoma, type B1. Her mental status eventually recovered by postoperative day 90. Paraneoplastic encephalopathy associated with thymoma is very rare, and symptoms can be improved by thymectomy. We report a case of paraneoplastic encephalopathy associated with a thymoma.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.373-383
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• 2016

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the factors affecting shiftwork tolerance among nurses and provide basic data, ultimately, in formulating a plan for improving their shiftwork tolerance. Methods: The participants were 317 nurses who were working at three general hospitals in Daejeon and Seoul. Data analyzed t-test, ANOVA, correlation analysis, and regression analysis using SPSS 20.0 program. Results: As for the sub-areas of shiftwork tolerance for the respondents, more than a half of nurses working at shifts suffered from insomnia, felt drowsy, complained of chronic fatigue, and were at the anxious and depressed state. Shiftwork tolerance differed by the daily intake of coffee and exercise. Shiftwork tolerance was significantly positively correlated with sleep-wake habits, hardiness, and flexibility and negatively correlated with a languidity. Regression analysis revealed that shiftwork tolerance was affected by age, sleep-wake habits, languidity, flexibility, and hardiness. Conclusion: To put the results, nurses had shiftwork tolerance affected by sleep-wake habits, languidity, and hardiness. It is therefore necessary to make a scheme for allowing nurses to improve hardiness and flexibility and decrease the languidity with the objective of improving their shiftwork tolerance.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.56 no.11
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• pp.500-504
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• 2013

Here we present the case of an 11-year-old female patient diagnosed with Caroli syndrome, who had refractory esophageal varices. The patient had a history of recurrent bleeding from esophageal varices, which was treated with endoscopic variceal ligation thrice over a period of 2 years. However, the bleeding was not controlled. When the patient finally visited the Emergency Department, the hemoglobin level was 4.4 g/dL. Transhepatic intrajugular portosystemic shunt was unsuccessful. Subsequently, the patient underwent percutaneous transhepatic variceal obliteration. Twenty hours after this procedure, the patient complained of aphasia, dizziness, headache, and general weakness. Six hours later, the patient became drowsy and unresponsive to painful stimuli. Lipiodol particles used to embolize the coronary and posterior gastric veins might have passed into the systemic arterial circulation, and they were found to be lodged in the brain, kidney, lung, and stomach. There was no abnormality of the portal vein on portal venography, and blood flow to the azygos vein through the paravertebral and hemiazygos systems was found to drain to the systemic circulation on coronary venography. Contrast echocardiography showed no pulmonary arteriovenous fistula. Symptoms improved with conservative management, and the esophageal varices were found to have improved on esophagogastroduodenoscopy.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.348-352
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• 2014

High-flow vertebral arteriovenous fistulas (VAVF) are rare complications of cervical spine surgery and characterized by iatrogenic direct-communication of the extracranial vertebral artery (VA) to the surrounding venous plexuses. The authors describe two patients with VAVF presenting with ischemic presentation after C1 pedicle screw insertion for a treatment of C2 fracture and nontraumatic atlatoaxial subluxation. The first patient presented with drowsy consciousness with blurred vision. The diffusion MRI showed an acute infarction on bilateral cerebellum and occipital lobes. The second patient presented with pulsatile tinnitus, dysarthria and a subjective weakness and numbness of extremities. In both cases, digital subtraction angiography demonstrated high-flow direct VAVFs adjacent to C1 screws. The VAVF of the second case occurred near the left posterior inferior cerebellar artery originated from the persistent first intersegmental artery of the left VA. Both cases were successfully treated by complete occlusion of the fistulous portion and the involved segment of the left VA using endovascular coil embolization. The authors reviewed the VAVFs after the upper-cervical spine surgery including C1 screw insertion and the feasibility with the attention notes of its endovascular treatment.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.493-493
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• 2000

Multi-valued decision making for transitional stochastic events was newly derived based on conditional probability of database. The two values (on-off) decision making method without transition had been proposed by one of the author in a previous work for a purpose of realizing human on-off decision making. The current method is an extension of the previous on-off decision making. By combining the conditional probability and the transitional probability, the closed form of the algorithm for the multi-valued transitional decision making was derived. The proposed multi-valued decision making was successfully applied to the determination of the five levels of the vigilance of a subject during the EEG recording; awake stage, drowsy stage and sleeping stages (stage 1, stage 2/3, REM (rapid eye movement)). The method for determining the vigilance level can be directly usable for the two purposes; selection of awake EEG segments for automatic EEG interpretation, and determination of sleep stages through sleep EEG. The proposed multi-valued decision making with a mathematical background of the probability can be applicable widely, in industries and in medical fields for purposes of the multi-valued decision making.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1997 no.11
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• pp.48-51
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• 1997

The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to protect the drowsiness of a driver. We measured the physiological signals, response time, and ace expression of the subjects in normal and drowsy state. Those data are used to establish the drowsiness index and fuzzy system. We employed the computer vision technology to extract and eye, track eyelids and measure the parameters related to drowsiness. These parameters were ed into the fuzzy system to decide the drowsiness level, When the drowsiness was detected, the fuzzy system generated warning signals which cons ist of sound and fragrance. Our system was available in decision of the drowsiness level and improvement of subjects' state.