Spontaneous Resolution Rate and Predictive Factors of Resolution in Children with Primary Vesicoureteral Reflux (소아에서 일차성 방광요관역류의 자연소실율 및 관련 인자)
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- Childhood Kidney Diseases
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- v.11 no.1
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- pp.74-82
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- 2007
Purpose : To analyze the clinical characteristics, spontaneous resolution rate and predictive factors of resolution in children with primary vesicoureteral reflux(VUR). Methods : Between October 1991 and July 2003, 149 children diagnosed with primary VUR at Chonbuk National University Hospital were reviewed retrospectively. All of the patients were maintained on low-dose antibiotic prophylaxis and underwent radionuclide cystograms at 1 year intervals over 3 years after the initial diagnosis of VUR by voiding cystourethrogram was made. Results : The median time to resolution of VUR was 24 months and the total 3 year-cumulative resolution rate of VUR was 61.7%. The following variables were associated with resolution of VUR according to univariate analysis-; age<1 year, male gender, mild grade of reflux, unilateral reflux, congenital hydronephrosis as clinical presentation at time of diagnosis of VUR, absence of focal defects in the renal scan at diagnosis, absence of recurrent UTI, renal scars and small kidney during follow-up. After adjustment by Cox regression model, five variables remained as independent predictors of VUR resolution; age<1 yew, relative risk 1.77(P<0.05), VUR grade I+II 2.98(P<0.05), absence of renal scars 2.23(P<0.05), and absence of small kidney 5.20(P<0.01) during follow-up. Conclusion : In this study, spontaneous resolution rate of VUR, even high grade reflux, is high in infants during medical management, and it was related to age, reflux grade at diagnosis, absence of renal scars and small kidney during follow-up. Therefore early surgical intervention should be avoided and reserved for the selected groups.
Statistics of aviation accident in Korea show that safety level of training flights is high. However, more than 80% of aviation accidents happen owing to human factors. And because most reasons of them are concerned with pilot error, it is very important for student pilots who will transport a lot of passengers to develop the knowledge of safety and abilities of risk management for preventing accidents. In this study, in order to investigate the Human Factors which affect safety in training student pilots for flight, verified the correlationbetween experiences of accident, the differences according to the experience level of training flight and the differences between college student pilots and ordinary student pilots on the basis of human factors that composes the SHELL models. For the study, Using SPSS 17.0, conducted Correlation Analysis, Analysis of Variance(ANOVA) and t-test. To sum up the result of this study, student pilot's ability and equipment in the cockpit are the important factors for safety when pilots are training flight. Also the analysis of the differences between human factors according to the characters of student pilots' groups shows that college student pilots are affected by immanent factors and organizational cultures. So far, there haven't been any accidents which is related with human casualties when training at the ATO(Approved Training Organization). But accidents can occur at any time and anywhere. Especially the human factors which comprises most of aviation accident have a wide reach and are impossible to be eliminated, therefore, it is best to minimize them. Because ATO is the starting point to lead the aviation industry of Korea, we will have to be aware of problems and improve education/training of human factors.
Until recently, successful implementation of ERP systems has been a popular topic among ERP researchers, who have attempted to identify its various contributing factors. None of these efforts, however, explicitly recognize the need to identify disparities that can exist between organizational information requirements and ERP systems. Since ERP systems are in fact "packages" -that is, software programs developed by independent software vendors for sale to organizations that use them-they are designed to meet the general needs of numerous organizations, rather than the unique needs of a particular organization, as is the case with custom-developed software. By adopting standard packages, organizations can substantially reduce many of the potential implementation risks commonly associated with custom-developed software. However, it is also true that the nature of the package itself could be a risk factor as the features and functions of the ERP systems may not completely comply with a particular organization's informational requirements. In this study, based on the organizational memory mismatch perspective that was derived from organizational memory theory and cognitive dissonance theory, we define the nature of disparities, which we call "mismatches," and propose that the mismatch between organizational information requirements and ERP systems is one of the primary determinants in the successful implementation of ERP systems. Furthermore, we suggest that customization efforts as a coping strategy for mismatches can play a significant role in increasing the possibilities of success. In order to examine the contention we propose in this study, we employed a survey-based field study of ERP project team members, resulting in a total of 77 responses. The results of this study show that, as anticipated from the organizational memory mismatch perspective, the mismatch between organizational information requirements and ERP systems makes a significantly negative impact on the implementation success of ERP systems. This finding confirms our hypothesis that the more mismatch there is, the more difficult successful ERP implementation is, and thus requires more attention to be drawn to mismatch as a major failure source in ERP implementation. This study also found that as a coping strategy on mismatch, the effects of customization are significant. In other words, utilizing the appropriate customization method could lead to the implementation success of ERP systems. This is somewhat interesting because it runs counter to the argument of some literature and ERP vendors that minimized customization (or even the lack thereof) is required for successful ERP implementation. In many ERP projects, there is a tendency among ERP developers to adopt default ERP functions without any customization, adhering to the slogan of "the introduction of best practices." However, this study asserts that we cannot expect successful implementation if we don't attempt to customize ERP systems when mismatches exist. For a more detailed analysis, we identified three types of mismatches-Non-ERP, Non-Procedure, and Hybrid. Among these, only Non-ERP mismatches (a situation in which ERP systems cannot support the existing information needs that are currently fulfilled) were found to have a direct influence on the implementation of ERP systems. Neither Non-Procedure nor Hybrid mismatches were found to have significant impact in the ERP context. These findings provide meaningful insights since they could serve as the basis for discussing how the ERP implementation process should be defined and what activities should be included in the implementation process. They show that ERP developers may not want to include organizational (or business processes) changes in the implementation process, suggesting that doing so could lead to failed implementation. And in fact, this suggestion eventually turned out to be true when we found that the application of process customization led to higher possibilities of failure. From these discussions, we are convinced that Non-ERP is the only type of mismatch we need to focus on during the implementation process, implying that organizational changes must be made before, rather than during, the implementation process. Finally, this study found that among the various customization approaches, bolt-on development methods in particular seemed to have significantly positive effects. Interestingly again, this finding is not in the same line of thought as that of the vendors in the ERP industry. The vendors' recommendations are to apply as many best practices as possible, thereby resulting in the minimization of customization and utilization of bolt-on development methods. They particularly advise against changing the source code and rather recommend employing, when necessary, the method of programming additional software code using the computer language of the vendor. As previously stated, however, our study found active customization, especially bolt-on development methods, to have positive effects on ERP, and found source code changes in particular to have the most significant effects. Moreover, our study found programming additional software to be ineffective, suggesting there is much difference between ERP developers and vendors in viewpoints and strategies toward ERP customization. In summary, mismatches are inherent in the ERP implementation context and play an important role in determining its success. Considering the significance of mismatches, this study proposes a new model for successful ERP implementation, developed from the organizational memory mismatch perspective, and provides many insights by empirically confirming the model's usefulness.
Objectives: Delirium after head trauma results in various cognitive and behavioral dysfunction. This study aimed at developing and validating a predicitive model for clinical improvement after delirium based on precipitating factors during hospitalization Method: Data were collected on 45 patients who developed delirium after head trauma using 5 year retrospective design, based on reviews of medical charts including psychiatric consultation reports. The differences of the group who sustained residual symptoms of delirium(The RS group) and the group of full recovery(The FR group) at 4 week follow-up visits were compared by motoric type of delirium, socio-demographic variables, neuroimaging variables and clinical variables of interest. Result: There was significant difference in reason for initial consultation between two groups, in terms of hyperactivity(p<.01). The presence of compensation claim, subcortical gray matter lesion was significantly associated with the RS group(p<.05). Total length of intensive care unit(ICU) admission and of hospital stay were significantly longer in RS group than FR group(p<.01). Conclusion: This study shows that hyperactivity on initial consultation, compensation claims, specific brain lesion were altogether significant factors in explaining prolonged duration of delirium after head trauma. A simple predictive model based on the presence of precipitating factors might be used to identify delirious patients at high risk for prolonged cognitive dysfunction. Early psychiatric intervention would be required for evaluating efficacious management and shortening admission period.
Franchising is one of the fastest growing types of business. It is already popular and well-known in the U.S., and has been growing in many other countries including Korea. Furthermore, many Korean franchising companies have expanded their business overseas actively. According to the data by the Ministry of Industry and Resource, 82 companies out of a sample of 500 franchising companies are already operating in many foreign countries and 48% of them have started their foreign business since 2006. This clearly indicates the fast growing current trend of foreign operation by Korean franchising companies. In spite of the fast growing trend of foreign expansion in the industry, academic research on internationalization of franchising companies is extremely difficult to find. Accordingly, academic research on the issue is necessary and urgent in Korea. Among the various research questions on internationalization of franchising business, this study intends to investigate the difference in organizational factors between the franchising companies doing foreign operation and those doing business only domestically. More specifically, this research has the following purposes. First, considering the lack of theoretical basis of previous studies, resource-based theory and agency theory are employed as the theoretical bases. Second, this study explains the difference in internationalization based on organizational factors such as company size, history and growth rate. Third, the five hypotheses regarding the difference in organizational factors are presented and tested empirically, which is the first attempt in the area of this topic. Finally, the study attempts to clarify the conflicting implications among theories regarding some organizational factos such as growth rate. As the theoretical background, resource-based theory and agency theory are discussed. According to resource-based theory, a firm can grow continuously when it has competence and resource, and also the ability to develop them. The competence and resource can include capital, human resource, management skill, market information, ability to manage risk, etc. Meanwhile, agency theory views the relationship between franchisor and franchisee as an agency relationship. In agency theory, bonding capability and monitoring capability are the two key factors which promote internationalization of franchising companies. Based on the two theories, a conceptual model is designed. The model consists of two groups of variables. One is organizational factors including size, history, growth rate, price bonding and geographic dispersion. The other is whether a franchising company is operating overseas or not. We developed the following five research hypotheses basically describing the relationship between organizational factors and internationalization of franchising companies. H1: The size of franchising companies operating overseas is larger than that of franchising companies operating domestically. H2: The history of franchising companies operating overseas is longer than that of franchising companies operating domestically. H3: The growth rate of franchising companies operating overseas is higher than that of franchising companies operating domestically. H4: The price bonding of franchising companies operating overseas is higher than that of franchising companies operating domestically. H5: The geographic dispersion of franchising companies operating overseas is wider than that of franchising companies operating domestically. Data for the analyses are obtained from 2005 Korea Franchise Survey data co-generated by Ministry of Industry and Resource, GS1 Korea, and Korea Franchise Association. Out of 2,804 population companies, 2,489 companies are excluded for various reasons and 315 companies are selected as the final sample. Prior to hypotheses tests, validity and reliability of the measures of size, history, growth rate and price bonding are examined for further analyses. Geographic dispersion is not validated since it is measured using nominal data. A series of independent sample T-tests is used to find out whether there exists any significant difference between the companies internationalized and those operating only domestically for each organizational factor. Among the five factors, size and geographic dispersion show significant difference, growth rate and price bonding do not reveal any difference and, finally, history factor shows conflicting results in the difference depending on how to measure it.