• Title/Summary/Keyword: outpatient system

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A Study on the Mobile Medical Service Program -Based on the Community Diagnosis of a Remote Farm Area- (순회진료사업(巡回診療事業)의 문제점(問題点)과 개선방향(改善方向) (일부(一部) 무의지역에 대(對)한 지역사진단(地域社診斷)을 중심(中心)으로))

  • Park, Hung-Bae;Choi, Dong-Wook
    • Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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    • v.11 no.1
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    • pp.86-97
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    • 1978
  • The mobile medical service has been operated for many years by a number of medical schools and hospitals as a most convenient means of medical service delivery to the people residing in such area where the geographical and socioeconomic conditions are not good enough to enjoy modern medical care. Despite of official appraisal showing off simply with numbers of outpatients treated and medical persons participated, however, as well recognized, the capability (in respect of budget, equipment and time) of those mobile medical teams is so limitted that it often discourages the recipients as well as medical participants themselves. In the midst of rising need to secure medical service of good quality to all parts of the country, and of developing concept of primary health care system, authors evaluated the effectiveness of and problems associated with mobile medical servies program through the community diagnosis of a village (Opo-myun, Kwangju-gun) to obtain the information which may be halpful for future improvement. 1. Owing to the nationwide Sae-Maul movement powerfully practiced during last several years, living environment of farm villages generally and remarkably improved including houses, water supply and wastes disposal etc. Neverthless, due to limitations in budget time and lack of knowledge (probably the most important), these improvements tend to keep up appearances only and are far from the goal which may being practical benefit in promoting the health of the community. 2. As a result of intensive population policy led by the government since 1962, there has been considerable advances in understanding and the rate of practicing family planning through out the villages and yet, one should see many things, especially education, to be done. Fifty eight per cent of mothers have not received prenatal check and the care for most (72%) delivery was offered by laymen at home. 3. Approximately seven per cent of the population was reported to have chronic illness but since only a few (practically none) of the people has had physical check up by doctors, the actual prevalence of chronic diseases may reach many times of the reported. The same fact was observed also in prevalence of tuberculosis; the patients registered at local health center totaled 31 comprising only 0.51% while the numbers in two neighboring villages (designated as demonstration area of tuberculosis control and mass examination was done recently) were 3.5 and 4.0% respectively. Prevalence rate of all dieseses and injuries expereinced during one month (July, 1977) was 15.8%. Only one tenth of those patients received treatment by physicians and one fifth was not treated at all. The situation was worse as for the chronic patients; 84% of all cases either have never been treated or discontinued therapy, and the main reasons were known to be financial difficulty and ignorance or indifference. 4. Among the patients treated by our mobile clinic, one third was chronic cases and 45% of all patients, by the opinion of doctors attended, were those who may be treated by specially trained nurses or other paramedics (objects of primary care). Besides, 20% of the cases required professional managements of level beyond the mobile team's capability and in this sense one may conclude that the effectiveness (performance) of present mobile medical team is quite limitted. According to above findings, the authors would like to suggest following for mobile medical service and overall medicare program for the people living in remote country side. 1. Establishment of primary health care system secured with effective communication and evacuation (between villages and local medical center) measures. 2. Nationwide enforcement of medical insurance system. 3. Simple outpatient care which now constitutes the main part of the most mobile medical services should largely be yielded up to primary health care unit of the village and the mobile team itself should be assigned on new and more urgent missions such as mass screening health examination of the villagers, health education with modern and effective audiovisual aids, professional training and consultant services for the primary health care organization.

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Treatment of Carcinoma of the Uterine Cervix with High-Dose-Rate Intracavitary Irradiation using Ralstron (고선량률 강내조사를 사용한 자궁경부암의 치료)

  • Suh Chang Ok;Kim Gwi Eon;Loh John J.K.
    • Radiation Oncology Journal
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    • v.8 no.2
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    • pp.231-239
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    • 1990
  • From May 1979 through December 1981 a total of 524 patients with carcinoma of the uterine cervix were treated by radiation therapy with curative intent. Among the 524 patients, 350 were treated with a high-dose-rate (HDR), remote-controlled, afterloading intracavitary irradiation (ICR) system using a cobalt source (Ralstron), and 168 patients received a low-dose-rate (LDR) ICR using a radium source. External beam irradiation with a total dose of 40-50 Gy to the whole pelvis followed by intracavitary irradiation with a total dose of 30-39 Gy in 10-13 fractions to point A was the treatment protocol. ICR was given three times a week with a dose of 3 Gy per fraction. Five-year actuarial survival rates in the HDR-ICR group were $77.6{\%}$ in stage IB (N=20), $68.2{\%}$ in stage II (N=182), and $50.9{\%}$ in stage III (N=148). In LDR-ICR group, 5-year survival rates were $87.5{\%}$ in stage IB (N=22), $66.3{\%}$ in stage II (N=91), and $55.4{\%}$ in stage III (N=52). Survival rates showed a statistically significant difference by stage, but there was no significant difference between the two ICR groups. Late bowel complications after radiotherapy were noted in $3.7{\%}$ of the HDR-ICR group and $8.4{\%}$ of the LDR-ICR group. There was no severe complication requiring surgical management. The incidence of bladder complications was $1.4{\%}$ in the HDR-ICR group and $2.4{\%}$ in the LDR-ICR group. The application of HDR-ICR was technically simple and easily performed on an outpatient basis without anesthesia, and the patients tolerated it very well. Radiation exposure to personnel was virtually nil in contrast to that of LDR-ICR. Within a given period of time, more patients can be treated with HDR-ICR because of the short treatment time. Therefore, the HDR-ICR system is highly recommended for a cancer center, particularly one with a large number of patients to be treated. In order to achieve an improved outcome, however, the optimum dose-fractionation schedule of HDR-ICR and optimum combination of intracavitary irradiation with external beam irradiation should be determined through an extensive protocol.

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A Study on the Improvement for Medical Service Using Video Promotion Materials for PET/CT Scans (PET/CT 검사에서 동영상 홍보물을 통한 의료서비스 향상에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Woo Hyun;Kim, Jung Seon;Ko, Hyun Soo;Sung, Ji Hye;Lee, Jeoung Eun
    • The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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    • v.17 no.1
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    • pp.30-35
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    • 2013
  • Purpose: One of the current services, providing information to the patients and their guardians by using promotion materials induces positive responses and contributes to the improvement of the hospital reliability. Therefore, the objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of audio visual materials, one of the means of promotion, as a way to give accurate medical information to resolve patient's curiosity about purpose and procedure of their examination and deplete complains about waiting which attributes negative effect to service quality assessment. Materials and Methods: 60 patients(mean age $53.97{\pm}12.24$, male : female = 26 : 34) who had $^{18}F-FDG PET/CT$ scan from July 2012 to August 2012 in Seoul Asan Medical Center were referred to the study. All of the patients having PET/CT scan were asked to watch an informative video material before the injection of radiopharmaceutical ($^{18}F-FDG$) and to fill in a questionnaire. Results: As a result of analyzing the contents of questionnaire, 52% of 60 patients had PET/CT scan for the first time and 72.4% of the patients read the PET/CT guidebook offered from their outpatient department or inpatient wards before their scan. After we searched the level of previous knowledge of the purpose and method of PET/CT scan, the patients answered 25.1% "know well", 34% "not sure", 40.9% "don't know" respectively. And 84.7% of the patients answered that watching the PET/CT guide video before the injection helps understanding what exam they were having and 15.3% of the patients did not. For the question asking ever the patients have experienced using our homepage or smart phone QR code to see the guide video before they visit out PET center, only 3.3% of them answered "yes". Lastly, the patients answered 60.1% "yes", 31.4% "so so" and 8.5% "no" respectively for the question asking whether watching the video makes the patients to fill the waiting time short. Conclusion: It is found that understanding of objective and method of the PET/CT scan and level of satisfaction was improved after the patients watched the guide video whether they had PET/CT scan before and read the PET/CT guidebook or not. Also, watching the video was effective for the reduction of perceptible waiting time. But while displaying the PET/CT guide video is useful for providing information about the scan and shortening the waiting time as one of the medical service, utilization of service was actually very poor because of the passive promotion and indifference of the patients about their examination. Therefore, from now on, it is necessary to construct the healthcare system which can be offered to more patients through the active promotion.

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Arthroscopically-Assisted Reduction and Internal Fixation of Intra-Articular Fractures of the Lateral Tibial Plateau (관절면을 침범한 경골 외측 고평부 골절에 대한 관절경을 이용한 정복 및 내고정술)

  • Kim, Juhan;Kim, Dong Hwi;Lim, Jae-Hwan;Jang, Hyunwoong;Kim, Young Wook
    • Journal of the Korean Orthopaedic Association
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    • v.54 no.3
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    • pp.227-236
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    • 2019
  • Purpose: To evaluate the results of tibial lateral plateau fractures using arthroscopic-assisted reduction and internal fixation without cortical window or bone grafts. Materials and Methods: From March 2009 to March 2017, 27 patients with Schatzker type II tibial plateau fractures with articular depression and displacement over 5 mm on a computed tomography (CT) scan, who were treated with arthroscopic reduction and internal fixation and followed-up for at least 18 months, were enrolled in this study. Under arthroscopic guidance, the depressed fracture fragment was reduced using a freer and fixed with 5.0 or 6.5 mm cannulated screws through the inframeniscal portal without a cortical window or bone graft. The clinical and radiological results were evaluated using a Rasmussen system. Second look arthroscopy was performed in thirteen patients during the implant removal operation. Results: All fractures healed completely with a mean union time of 8.7 weeks (range from 8 to 12 weeks). Twenty four patients had good to excellent clinical results and 25 patients had good to excellent radiological results according to the Rasmussen classification. A well-healed articular surface with fibrocartilage was also found in 13 cases with second look arthroscopy. The 8 cases on CT scan at outpatient department follow-up showed bone union without bone grafting. Conclusion: Arthroscopic-assisted fixation of tibial lateral plateau fractures is a useful method without a cortical window or bone graft that produces good clinical results.

Development and application of prediction model of hyperlipidemia using SVM and meta-learning algorithm (SVM과 meta-learning algorithm을 이용한 고지혈증 유병 예측모형 개발과 활용)

  • Lee, Seulki;Shin, Taeksoo
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.24 no.2
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    • pp.111-124
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    • 2018
  • This study aims to develop a classification model for predicting the occurrence of hyperlipidemia, one of the chronic diseases. Prior studies applying data mining techniques for predicting disease can be classified into a model design study for predicting cardiovascular disease and a study comparing disease prediction research results. In the case of foreign literatures, studies predicting cardiovascular disease were predominant in predicting disease using data mining techniques. Although domestic studies were not much different from those of foreign countries, studies focusing on hypertension and diabetes were mainly conducted. Since hypertension and diabetes as well as chronic diseases, hyperlipidemia, are also of high importance, this study selected hyperlipidemia as the disease to be analyzed. We also developed a model for predicting hyperlipidemia using SVM and meta learning algorithms, which are already known to have excellent predictive power. In order to achieve the purpose of this study, we used data set from Korea Health Panel 2012. The Korean Health Panel produces basic data on the level of health expenditure, health level and health behavior, and has conducted an annual survey since 2008. In this study, 1,088 patients with hyperlipidemia were randomly selected from the hospitalized, outpatient, emergency, and chronic disease data of the Korean Health Panel in 2012, and 1,088 nonpatients were also randomly extracted. A total of 2,176 people were selected for the study. Three methods were used to select input variables for predicting hyperlipidemia. First, stepwise method was performed using logistic regression. Among the 17 variables, the categorical variables(except for length of smoking) are expressed as dummy variables, which are assumed to be separate variables on the basis of the reference group, and these variables were analyzed. Six variables (age, BMI, education level, marital status, smoking status, gender) excluding income level and smoking period were selected based on significance level 0.1. Second, C4.5 as a decision tree algorithm is used. The significant input variables were age, smoking status, and education level. Finally, C4.5 as a decision tree algorithm is used. In SVM, the input variables selected by genetic algorithms consisted of 6 variables such as age, marital status, education level, economic activity, smoking period, and physical activity status, and the input variables selected by genetic algorithms in artificial neural network consist of 3 variables such as age, marital status, and education level. Based on the selected parameters, we compared SVM, meta learning algorithm and other prediction models for hyperlipidemia patients, and compared the classification performances using TP rate and precision. The main results of the analysis are as follows. First, the accuracy of the SVM was 88.4% and the accuracy of the artificial neural network was 86.7%. Second, the accuracy of classification models using the selected input variables through stepwise method was slightly higher than that of classification models using the whole variables. Third, the precision of artificial neural network was higher than that of SVM when only three variables as input variables were selected by decision trees. As a result of classification models based on the input variables selected through the genetic algorithm, classification accuracy of SVM was 88.5% and that of artificial neural network was 87.9%. Finally, this study indicated that stacking as the meta learning algorithm proposed in this study, has the best performance when it uses the predicted outputs of SVM and MLP as input variables of SVM, which is a meta classifier. The purpose of this study was to predict hyperlipidemia, one of the representative chronic diseases. To do this, we used SVM and meta-learning algorithms, which is known to have high accuracy. As a result, the accuracy of classification of hyperlipidemia in the stacking as a meta learner was higher than other meta-learning algorithms. However, the predictive performance of the meta-learning algorithm proposed in this study is the same as that of SVM with the best performance (88.6%) among the single models. The limitations of this study are as follows. First, various variable selection methods were tried, but most variables used in the study were categorical dummy variables. In the case with a large number of categorical variables, the results may be different if continuous variables are used because the model can be better suited to categorical variables such as decision trees than general models such as neural networks. Despite these limitations, this study has significance in predicting hyperlipidemia with hybrid models such as met learning algorithms which have not been studied previously. It can be said that the result of improving the model accuracy by applying various variable selection techniques is meaningful. In addition, it is expected that our proposed model will be effective for the prevention and management of hyperlipidemia.