• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.3-8
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• 2020

Genital lymphedema (GL) is an uncommon and disabling disease that manifests as enlargement of the genital region resulting from the disturbance of lymphatic drainage. Although conservative treatment such as decompression is typically the first-line approach, surgical intervention has been shown to be effective in certain cases. This study aimed to systematically review studies evaluating available surgical alternatives for the treatment of male GL. A systematic search strategy using keyword and subject headings was applied to PubMed, Scopus, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library in May 2019. Studies investigating various surgical techniques to treat penile and scrotal lymphedema were included. The potential risk of bias of included trials was evaluated using the methodological index for non-randomized studies (MINORS). In total, 13 studies met the inclusion criteria, nine of which were determined to be high-quality. The average MINORS score was 12.45 for studies involving excision and 14 for studies involving lymphovenous anastomosis (LVA). The most common reason for a low score was a failure to describe the inclusion criteria. Recurrence of lymphedema during follow-up was reported in four studies involving excision and in no studies involving LVA. In general, the quality of the included literature was considered to be fair. Although surgical intervention might not always prevent the recurrence of lymphedema, all of the studies reported improved quality of life after the procedure. This study could be used as the basis for evidence-based guidelines to be applied in clinical practice for managing male GL.

• Investigative and Clinical Urology
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• v.59 no.6
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• pp.371-375
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• 2018

Purpose: To compare patients with sepsis due to obstructive urolithiasis (Sep-OU) and underwent drainage by percutaneous nephrostomy (PCN) or a double-J (DJ)-ureteral stent and to identify predictive risk factors of DJ stent failure in these patients. Materials and Methods: We reviewed our records from January 2013 to July 2018 and identified 286 adult patients with Sep-OU out of which 36 had bilateral involvement, thus total 322 renal units were studied. Urologic residents in training carried out both ureteral stenting and PCN tube placement. Demographic data and stone characteristics were recorded along with Charlson comorbidity index. For predicting risk factors of DJ stent failure, those variables that had a p-value <0.1 in univariate analysis were combined in a multinomial regression analysis model. Results: The patients with PCN placement were significantly older than those with DJ stent placement (p=0.001) and also had significant number of units with multiple calculi (p=0.018). PCN was also placed more frequently in those patients with a upper ureteric calculi (p<0.05). On multinomial regression analysis multiple calculi (p=0.014; odds ratio [OR], 4.878; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.377-17.276) and larger calculi size (p=0.040; OR, 0.974; 95% CI, 0.950-0.999) were the significant predictors of DJ stent failure. Conclusions: In patients with sepsis from obstructive urolithiasis due to larger and multiple calculi a PCN placement might be better suited although this data requires further prospective randomized studies to be extrapolated.

• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.358-368
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• 2019

Purpose: Pediatric Crohn's disease (CD) is directly related to growth and has a high probability of requiring surgical intervention(s); therefore, more active treatment for CD is required for children. This study investigated the impact of biologics on growth and disease course associated with surgery. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study involving patients diagnosed with CD at the Seoul National University Children's Hospital (Seoul, Korea) between January 2006 and October 2017. The aim was to determine the characteristics of pediatric patients with CD and whether biologics affected growth and the surgical disease course. Results: Among patients who underwent surgery for CD, the mean number of operations per patient was 1.89. The mean time from initial diagnosis to surgery was 19.3 months. The most common procedure was fistulectomy (34%), followed by incision and drainage (25%). In all patients, the use of biologics increased the height (p=0.002) and body mass index (BMI) (p=0.005). Among patients who underwent surgery, height (p=0.004) and BMI (p=0.048) were increased in the group using biologics. Patients who used biologics exhibited a low operation rate only within 2 years after diagnosis, with no differences thereafter (p=0.027). Conclusion: Although biologics could not mitigate the operation rate in pediatric patients who underwent surgery for CD, biological therapy delayed disease progression within 2 years of disease onset. Additionally, biologics conferred growth and BMI benefits in this window period. Therefore, it may be helpful to use biologics for optimal growth in pediatric patients with a high probability of undergoing future surgery.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.151-158
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• 2019

Objectives of this study were to identify the hotspot for displacement of the on-line water quality sensors, in order to detect illicit discharge of untreated wastewater. A total of twenty-six water quality parameters were measured in sewer networks of the industrial complex located in Daejeon city as a test-bed site of this study. For the water qualities measured on a daily basis by 2-hour interval, the self-organizing maps(SOMs), one of the artificial neural networks(ANNs), were applied to classify the catchments to the clusters in accordance with patterns of water qualities discharged, and to determine the hotspot for priority sensor allocation in the study. The results revealed that the catchments were classified into four clusters in terms of extent of water qualities, in which the grouping were validated by the Euclidean distance and Davies-Bouldin index. Of the on-line sensors, total organic carbon(TOC) sensor, selected to be suitable for organic pollutants monitoring, would be effective to be allocated in D and a part of E catchments. Pb sensor, of heavy metals, would be suitable to be displaced in A and a part of B catchments.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.72-78
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• 2021

Combined Western-Korean medicine treatments were given to a 67-year-old woman with late onset seizures who underwent surgical drainage of a subdural hematoma. Clonazepam and herbal medicine was prescribed. Acupuncture, moxibustion, cupping, chuna, and physical therapy were also performed. The frequency and intensity of seizures was assessed using the Chalfont Seizure Severity Scale. The seizure index score improved from 25 at admission to 0 at discharge. Pain in the right upper extremity reduced from 10 to 0 on the visual analogue scale and muscle strength increased from Grade 3 to 5 in Medical Research Council Scale for the Manual Muscle Test. At the time of hospitalization, the manual muscle strength tests for the affected shoulder, elbow, wrist, and grip strength were 30%, 60%, 10%, 5%, respectively, which improved almost 100% by discharge. Further studies using combined Western-Korean medicine for seizures after strokes are necessary to determine the most effective treatment.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.64 no.5
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• pp.53-65
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• 2022

Most of the reservoirs managed by the city and county are small and it is difficult to respond to climate change because the drainage area is small and the inflow increases rapidly when a heavy rain occurs. In this study, the current status of reservoirs managed by city and county in Gyeonggi-do was reviewed and flood vulnerability due to climate change was analyzed. In order to analyze the impact of climate change, CMIP6-based future climate scenario provided by IPCC was used, and future rainfall data was established through downscaling of climate scenario (SSP8-8.5). The flood vulnerability of reservoirs due to climate change was evaluated using the concept provided by the IPCC. The future annual precipitation at six weather stations appeared a gradual increase and the fluctuation range of the annual precipitation was also found to increase. As a result of calculating the flood vulnerability index, it was analyzed that the flood vulnerability was the largest in the 2055s period and the lowest in the 2025s period. In the past period (2000s), the number of D and E grade reservoirs was 58, but it was found to increase to 107 in the 2055s period. In 2085s, there were 17 E grade reservoirs, which was more than in the past. Therefore, it is necessary to take measures against the increasing risk of flooding in the future.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.175-182
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• 2023

In general, the design of structures and its construction processes are fundamentally dependent on their foundation and supporting ground. Thus, it is imperative to understand the behavior of the soil under certain stress and drainage conditions. As it is well known that certain characteristics and behaviors of soils with fines are highly dependent on water content, it is critical to accurately measure and identify the status of the soils in terms of water contents. Liquid limit is one of the important soil index properties to define such characteristics. However, liquid limit measurement can be affected by the proficiency of the operator. On the other hand, dynamic properties of soils are also necessary in many different applications and current testing methods often require special equipment in the laboratory, which is often expensive and sensitive to test conditions. In order to address these concerns and advance the state of the art, this study explores a novel method to determine the liquid limit of cohesive soil by employing video-based vibration analysis. In this research, the modal characteristics of cohesive soil columns are extracted from videos by utilizing phase-based motion estimation. By utilizing the proposed method that analyzes the optical flow in every pixel of the series of frames that effectively represents the motion of corresponding points of the soil specimen, the vibration characteristics of the entire soil specimen could be assessed in a non-contact and non-destructive manner. The experimental investigation results compared with the liquid limit determined by the standard method verify that the proposed method reliably and straightforwardly identifies the liquid limit of clay. It is envisioned that the proposed approach could be applied to measuring liquid limit of soil in practical field, entertaining its simple implementation that only requires a digital camera or even a smartphone without the need for special equipment that may be subject to the proficiency of the operator.

• Journal of The Geomorphological Association of Korea
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.87-103
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the risk of cropland and man-made infrastructures in a landslide-prone area using a GIS-based method. To achieve this goal, a landslide inventory map was prepared based on aerial photograph analysis as well as field observations. A total of 550 landslides have been counted in the entire study area. For model analysis and validation, extracted landslides were randomly selected and divided into two groups. The landslide causative factors such as slope, aspect, curvature, topographic wetness index, elevation, forest type, forest crown density, geology, land-use, soil drainage, and soil texture were used in the analysis. Moreover, to identify the correlation between landslides and causative factors, pixels were divided into several classes and frequency ratio was also extracted. A landslide susceptibility map was constructed using a bayesian predictive model (BPM) based on the entire events. In the cross validation process, the landslide susceptibility map as well as observation data were plotted with a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve then the area under the curve (AUC) was calculated and tried to extract a success rate curve. The results showed that, the BPM produced 85.8% accuracy. We believed that the model was acceptable for the landslide susceptibility analysis of the study area. In addition, for risk assessment, monetary value (local) and vulnerability scale were added for each social thematic data layers, which were then converted into US dollar considering landslide occurrence time. Moreover, the total number of the study area pixels and predictive landslide affected pixels were considered for making a probability table. Matching with the affected number, 5,000 landslide pixels were assumed to run for final calculation. Based on the result, cropland showed the estimated total risk as US $ 35.4 million and man-made infrastructure risk amounted to US $ 39.3 million.

• Journal of The Geomorphological Association of Korea
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.53-67
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to identify the quality of landslide susceptibility in a landslide-prone area (Jinbu-myeon, Gangwon-do, South Korea) by spatial prediction modeling approach and compare the results obtained. For this goal, a landslide inventory map was prepared mainly based on past historical information and aerial photographs analysis (Daum Map, 2008), as well as some field observation. Altogether, 550 landslides were counted at the whole study area. Among them, 182 landslides are debris flow and each group of landslides was constructed in the inventory map separately. Then, the landslide inventory was randomly selected through Excel; 50% landslide was used for model analysis and the remaining 50% was used for validation purpose. Total 12 contributing factors, such as slope, aspect, curvature, topographic wetness index (TWI), elevation, forest type, forest timber diameter, forest crown density, geology, landuse, soil depth, and soil drainage were used in the analysis. Moreover, to find out the co-relation between landslide causative factors and incidents landslide, pixels were divided into several classes and frequency ratio for individual class was extracted. Eventually, six landslide susceptibility maps were constructed using the Bayesian Predictive Discriminant (BPD), Empirical Likelihood Ratio (ELR), and Linear Regression Method (LRM) models based on different category dada. Finally, in the cross validation process, landslide susceptibility map was plotted with a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and calculated the area under the curve (AUC) and tried to extract success rate curve. The result showed that Bayesian, likelihood and linear models were of 85.52%, 85.23%, and 83.49% accuracy respectively for total data. Subsequently, in the category of debris flow landslide, results are little better compare with total data and its contained 86.33%, 85.53% and 84.17% accuracy. It means all three models were reasonable methods for landslide susceptibility analysis. The models have proved to produce reliable predictions for regional spatial planning or land-use planning.

• Journal of The Geomorphological Association of Korea
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.65-80
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• 2020

This paper deals with risk assessment of life in a landslide-prone area by a GIS-based modeling method. Landslide susceptibility maps can provide a probability of landslide prone areas to mitigate or proper control this problems and to take any development plan and disaster management. A landslide inventory map of the study area was prepared based on past historical information and aerial photography analysis. A total of 550 landslides have been counted at the whole study area. The extracted landslides were randomly selected and divided into two different groups, 50% of the landslides were used for model calibration and the other were used for validation purpose. Eleven causative factors (continuous and thematic) such as slope, aspect, curvature, topographic wetness index, elevation, forest type, forest crown density, geology, land-use, soil drainage, and soil texture were used in hazard analysis. The correlation between landslides and these factors, pixels were divided into several classes and frequency ratio was also extracted. Eventually, a landslide susceptibility map was constructed using a logistic regression model based on entire events. Moreover, the landslide susceptibility map was plotted with a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and calculated the area under the curve (AUC) and tried to extract a success rate curve. Based on the results, logistic regression produced an 85.18% accuracy, so we believed that the model was reliable and acceptable for the landslide susceptibility analysis on the study area. In addition, for risk assessment, vulnerability scale were added for social thematic data layer. The study area predictive landslide affected pixels 2,000 and 5,000 were also calculated for making a probability table. In final calculation, the 2,000 predictive landslide affected pixels were assumed to run. The total population causalities were estimated as 7.75 person that was relatively close to the actual number published in Korean Annual Disaster Report, 2006.