• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.407-413
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• 2018

Most sleep apnea patients exhibit severe snoring, and long-lasting sleep apnea may cause insomnia, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and other diseases. Although polysomnography is the typical sleep diagnostic method to accurately diagnose sleep apnea by measuring a variety of bio-signals that occur during sleep, it is inconvenient as the patient has to sleep with attached electrodes at the hospital for the diagnosis. In this study, a diagnostic pillow is designed to measure respiration, heart rate, and snoring during sleep, using only one polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) sensor. A PVDF sensor with piezoelectric properties was inserted into a specially made instrument to extract accurate signals regardless of the posture during sleep. Wavelet analysis was used to identify the extractability and frequency domain signals of respiration, heart rate, and snoring from the signals generated by the PVDF sensor. In particular, to separate the respiratory signal in the 0.2~0.5 Hz frequency region, wavelet analysis was performed after removing 1~2 Hz frequency components. In addition, signals for respiration, heart rate, and snoring were separated from the PVDF sensor signal through a Butterworth filter and median filter based on the information obtained from the wavelet analysis. Moreover, the possibility of measuring sleep apnea from these separated signals was confirmed. To verify the usefulness of this study, data obtained during sleeping was used.

• Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.148-151
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• 2014

Objective : Posture-induced radial neuropathy, known as Saturday night palsy, occurs because of compression of the radial nerve. The clinical symptoms of radial neuropathy are similar to stroke or a herniated cervical disk, which makes it difficult to diagnose and sometimes leads to inappropriate evaluations. The purpose of our study was to establish the clinical characteristics and diagnostic assessment of compressive radial neuropathy. Methods : Retrospectively, we reviewed neurophysiologic studies on 25 patients diagnosed with radial nerve palsy, who experienced wrist drop after maintaining a certain posture for an extended period. The neurologic presentations, clinical prognosis, and electrophysiology of the patients were obtained from medical records. Results : Subjects were 19 males and 6 females. The median age at diagnosis was 46 years. The right arm was affected in 13 patients and the left arm in 12 patients. The condition was induced by sleeping with the arms hanging over the armrest of a chair because of drunkenness, sleeping while bending the arm under the pillow, during drinking, and unknown. The most common clinical presentation was a wrist drop and paresthesia on the dorsum of the 1st to 3rd fingers. Improvement began after a mean of 2.4 weeks. Electrophysiologic evaluation was performed after 2 weeks that revealed delayed nerve conduction velocity in all patients. Conclusion : Wrist drop is an entrapment syndrome that has a good prognosis within several weeks. Awareness of its clinical characteristics and diagnostic assessment methods may help clinicians make diagnosis of radial neuropathy and exclude irrelevant evaluations.