• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.62 no.3
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• pp.217-222
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• 2007

Talc pleurodesis is a safe and effective treatment for a recurrent malignant pleural effusion. However, acute hypoxemia, pulmonary edema or acute respiratory failure can develop in a small number of patients. We report 2 patients who developed fatal hypoxemia after talc pleurodesis which was necessary the control recurrent pleural effusion. The first case was an 18-year old male diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma with bilateral lung metastases and pleural effusion. The performance status was ECOG (Eastern Cooperative Foncology Group) grade 3. Fever along with hypoxemia and leukocytosis developed 10 hours after the second talc pleurodesis on the right side for an uncontrolled pleural effusion, The patient died from respiratory failure after 13 days. The second case was a 66-year old female diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer with a bone metastasis. Two weeks after systemic chemotherapy, she complained of dyspnea, and a pleural effusion was observed on the right side. Her performance status was ECOG grade 3. Talc pleurodesis was performed for recurrent pleural effusion, but hypoxemia developed 6 days after pleurodesis and she died from respiratory failure 10 days after pleurodesis. In conclusion, talc pleurodesis should be performed very carefully in patients with a poor performance status, in cases with repeated pleurodesis, bilateral pleural effusion, recent chemotherapy, radiotherapy and when there are parenchymal metastatic lesions present.

• The Journal of the Korean bone and joint tumor society
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.162-168
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• 2003

Purpose: Primary malignant bone tumors are classified with mesenchymal sarcomas (MS) such as osteosarcoma and chondrosarcoma and small round cell sarcomas (SRS) such as Ewing's sarcoma and lymphoma. Radiological examinations for skeletal sarcoma were using MR scan in tubular bone sarcomas and CT scan in flat bone sarcomas recently. Both MR and CT scans show some findings of bone destruction and soft tissue mass but MR scans don't reveal a finding with mineralization relatively. So we investigated bone destructive pattern of skeletal sarcomas on both MR and CT scans for differentiation of MS and SRS. Materials and Methods: There are 28 MS and 26 SRS examined with MR or CT scans. The findings according to bone destructive pattern were divided to eccentric and concentric in 26 cases of tubular bone sarcomas with MR scan and 28 cases of flat bone sarcomas with CT scan. Results: MR images revealed eccentric destruction in 12 cases of 16 MS and concentric in all cases of 10 SRS (p>.01). CT images showed eccentric destruction in 10 cases of 12 MS and concentric bone destruction in 13 cases of 16 SRS (p>.01) Conclusion: The findings divided to eccentric and concentric bone destructive patterns were useful for differential diagnosis of MS from SRS on both MR and CT scans.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.317-326
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• 1999

Background: Neural control of airway function is through parasympathetic, sympathetic and non-adrenergic, non-cholinergic mechanisms. The autonomic nervous system controls the airway smooth muscle tone, mucociliary system, permeability and blood flow in the bronchial circulation and release of mediators from the mast cells and other inflammatory cells. The cardiovascular and respiratory autonomic efferent fibers have a common central origin, so altered cardiovascular autonomic reflexes could reflect the altered respiratory autonomic status. Therefore, we performed this study to assess the autonomic abnormality and determine the correlating factors of severity of autonomic neuropathy in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease(COPD) using easily reproducible cardiovascular autonomic reflex function test. Method: The study included 20 patients with COPD and 20 healthy persons obtained on Health Promotion Center in Yeungnam university hospital. All the patients had history and clinical features of COPD as defined by the American Thoracic Society. Any patients with myocardial ischemia, cardiac arrythmia, hypertension, central or peripheral nervous system disease, diabetes mellitus, or any other diseases known to produce autonomic neuropathy, has excluded. The autonomic nervous system function tests included three tests evaluating the parasympathetic system and two tests evaluating the sympathetic system. And also all subjects were subjected to pulmonary function test and arterial blood gas analysis. Results: Autonomic dysfunction was more commonly associated with patients with COPD than healthy person The parasympathetic dysfunction was frequent in patient with COPD, but sympathetic dysfunction seemed preserved. The severity of parasympathetic dysfunction in patients with COPD was correlated with the degree of duration of disease, smoking, reductions in the value of $FEV_1$ and FVC, and arterial hypoxemia but no such correlation existed for age, type of COPD, $FEV_1$/FVC, or $PaCO_s$. Conclusion: There is high frequency of parasympathetic dysfunction associated with COPD and the parasympathetic abnormality in COPD is increased in proportion to severity of airway disease. In COPD, parasympathetic dysfunction probably does not the cause of disease, but it may be an effect of disease progression.