• Physical Therapy Korea
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• 제28권1호
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• pp.72-76
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• 2021

Background: A pressure ulcer is common in soft tissue over the greater trochanter (GT) in side-lying position, and sustained tissue deformation induced by the prolonged external force is a primary cause, which can be discussed with soft tissues' viscoelastic properties (i.e., stress relaxation, creep response). Objects: Using an automated hand-held indentation device, we measured the viscoelastic properties of soft tissue over the hip area, in order to examine how the properties are affected by site with respect to the GT. Methods: Twenty participants (15 males and 5 females) who aged from 21 to 32 were participated. An automated hand-held indentation device was used to measure the stress relaxation time and creep response. Trials were acquired for three different locations with respect to the GT (i.e., right over the GT, 6 cm anterior or posterior to the GT). For each location, five trials were acquired and averaged for data analyses. Results: Soft tissues' stress relaxation time and creep response were associated with site (F = 23.98, p < 0.005; F = 24.09, p < 0.005; respectively). The stress relaxation time was greatest at posterior gluteal region (19.22 ± 2.49 ms), and followed by anterior region (15.39 ± 2.47 ms) and right over the GT (14.40 ± 3.18 ms). Similarly, creep response was greatest at posterior gluteal region (1.16 ± 0.14), and followed by anterior region (0.95 ± 0.14) and right over the GT (0.89 ± 0.18). Conclusion: Our results showed that the stress relaxation and creep were greatest at the posterior gluteal region and least at right over the GT, indicating that the gluteal soft tissue is more protective to the prolonged external force, when compared to the trochanteric soft tissue. The results suggest that a risk of pressure ulcer over the GT may decrease with slightly posteriorly rotated side-lying position.

• Clinical and Experimental Vaccine Research
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.319-327
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• 2023

Purpose: Patients with hematological malignancies are at an increased risk of severe infection with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, developing an adequate immune response after vaccination is difficult, especially in patients with lymphoid neoplasms. Since the long-term effects of the BNT162b2 vaccine are unclear, the humoral immune response 5 months after the two vaccinations in patients with hematological disorders was analyzed. Materials and Methods: Samples were collected from 96 patients vaccinated twice with BNT162b2 and treated with at least one line of an antitumor or immunosuppressive drug in our hospital from November 2021 to February 2022. Serum anti-severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (anti-SARS-CoV-2) spike (S) antibody titers were analyzed. Patients were age- and sex-matched using propensity matching and compared with a healthy control group. Patients with serum anti-SARS-CoV-2 S antibodies were defined as 'responder' if >50 U/mL. The patients had B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (B-NHL), multiple myeloma, chronic myeloid leukemia, etc. Results: Patients had significantly low antibody levels (median, 55.3 U/mL vs. 809.8 U/mL; p<0.001) and a significantly low response rate (p<0.001). Multivariate analysis showed that patients with B-NHL, aged >72 years, were associated with a low response to vaccination. There were no significant differences between patients with chronic myeloid leukemia and healthy controls. Conclusion: Our study shows that patients with hematological disorders are at risk of developing severe COVID-19 infections because of low responsiveness to vaccination. Moreover, the rate of antibody positivity differed between the disease groups. Further studies are warranted to determine an appropriate preventive method for these patients, especially those with B-NHL.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• 제20권4호
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• pp.649-661
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• 2019

Objective: To systematically review the evaluation of the diagnostic accuracy of pre-treatment apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and change in ADC during the intra- or post-treatment period, for the prediction of locoregional failure in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Materials and Methods: Ovid-MEDLINE and Embase databases were searched up to September 8, 2018, for studies on the use of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging for the prediction of locoregional treatment response in patients with HNSCC treated with chemoradiation or radiation therapy. Risk of bias was assessed by using the Quality Assessment Tool for Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2. Results: Twelve studies were included in the systematic review, and diagnostic accuracy assessment was performed using seven studies. High pre-treatment ADC showed inconsistent results with the tendency for locoregional failure, whereas all studies evaluating changes in ADC showed consistent results of a lower rise in ADC in patients with locoregional failure compared to those with locoregional control. The sensitivities and specificities of pre-treatment ADC and change in ADC for predicting locoregional failure were relatively high (range: 50-100% and 79-96%, 75-100% and 69-95%, respectively). Meta-analytic pooling was not performed due to the apparent heterogeneity in these values. Conclusion: High pre-treatment ADC and low rise in early intra-treatment or post-treatment ADC with chemoradiation, could be indicators of locoregional failure in patients with HNSCC. However, as the studies are few, heterogeneous, and at high risk for bias, the sensitivity and specificity of these parameters for predicting the treatment response are yet to be determined.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• 제22권6호
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• pp.1107-1108
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• 2006

As expanding municipal and industrial areas since started the economic development plan in earnest in 1970's, the water resource, mainly river surface water has been seriously polluted. Nevertheless, being upgraded in their treatment technologies for the drinking water, the safety has been issued one of crucially social problem in Korea. The water authorities has tried to improve the quality such as amending the drinking water quality standard to be monitored; hazardous chemicals and microorganis have been added and now 55 items, before 47 items, since in 2002. The Water Authorities of Seoul, the capital city of Korea, planned to assess the safty of drinking water quality after amended the standard. This study was conducted to assess the risk due to polluted chemicals including 21 heavy metals, VOCs, pesticides, PAHs, DBPs and organic chemicals among the regulated items. The risk assessment were undertaken hazard identification, exposure assessment, dose-response assessment and risk characterization. For the exposoure assessment, tap water, bottled water and purified water were sampled and analyzed in February, 2004. Risk characterization of detected chemicals was categorized into carcinogenecity and noncarcinogenecity, and estimated the excess of carcinogens and compapared with the reference dose (RfD) of noncarcinogenns. The excess risk of carcinogens from samples were considered comparatively in the acceptable levels; $10^{-6}$ for cancer risk and hazard quotient (HQ) 1.0 for noncancer risk. The deteced levels were estimated in $10^{-5}{\sim}10^{-6}$ of cancer risk and below 1.0 of HQ of noncancer risk. While three kinds of water were determined within the acceptal levels, DBPs were detected in tap water and purified were and some undesireable chemicals such as more fluoride detected rather than the quality stanadard. For the drinking water safety, it shoud be continuously monitored, assessed and managed as well risk communiction between the authoritis and public.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• 제17권3호
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• pp.287-294
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• 2017

Recently the construction project is becoming large-sized, complicated, and modernize. This has increased the uncertainty of construction risk. Therefore, studies should be followed regarding scientifically identifying the risk factors, quantifying the frequency and severity of risk factors in order to develop a model that can quantitatively evaluate and manage the risk for response the increased risk in construction. To address the problem, this study analyze the probability distribution of risk causes, the probability of occurrence and frequency of the specific risk level through Monte Carlo simulation method based on the accident data caused at construction sites. In the end, this study derives quantitative analysis by analyzing the amount of risk and probability distributions of accident causes. The results of this study will be a basis for future quantitative risk management models and risk management research.

• Asian Journal of Atmospheric Environment
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• 제11권2호
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• pp.61-70
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• 2017

This study evaluated the human health risk in terms of the excess number of mortality and morbidity in the megacity Mumbai, India due to air pollution. AirQ software was used to enumerate the various health impacts of critical pollutants in Mumbai in past 22 years during 1992-2013. A relationship concept based on concentration-response relative risk and population attributable-risk proportion was employed by adopting World Health Organization (WHO) guideline for concentrations of air pollutants like $PM_{10}$, $SO_2$ and $NO_2$. For the year 1992 in Mumbai, it was observed that excess number of cases of total mortality, cardiovascular mortality, respiratory mortality, hospital admission due to COPD, respiratory disease and cardiovascular disease were 8420, 4914, 889, 149, 10568 and 4081 respectively. However, after 22 years these figures increased to 15872, 9962, 1628, 580, 20527 and 7905 respectively, but all of these reached maximum in the year 2006. From the result, it is also noted that except COPD morbidity the excess number of cases from 1992-2002 to 2003-2013 increased almost by 30%; and the excess number of mortality and morbidity is basically due to particulate matter ($PM_{10}$) than due to gaseous pollutants.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• 제17권1호
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• pp.149-168
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• 2015

It is expected that the temperature in Pyeongyang will be similar to that ($16.6^{\circ}C$) in Seogwipo in the late 21st century, and most of South Korea will enter the subtropical climate due to climate change. Change in the precipitation pattern like the range of fluctuation caused by climate change will lead to expanded uncertainty in securing reliable water supply, along with a serious impact on demands for living and industrial water due to change in the volume and period of river outflow. As industrial water for production activities is estimated based on the contract quantity, it is difficult to apply rationalization of water usage and incentives in water recycling. Therefore many companies are making efforts in complying with the effluent standard while spending few resources on such rationalization and recycling. This study researched water risk management over 115 Korean companies by 28 questions in 4 categories. Through the research, this study aims to understand water risk management levels and seek response plans.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• 제6권5호
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• pp.177-185
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• 2005

Construction uncertainties are frequently exposed to the claims. In most cases, an interpretation of the claims is based on the construction contract. Therefore, the key points of contract negotiation are how to fairly distribute the contract risks to the client and contractor. For these, a FIDIC that is considered as an international standard contract form would be a good reference to decide reasonable contract risk distribution. In order to find out any unreasonable and unfair contract clauses at the general conditions of contract applying generally to public construction project in Korea, this study surveys, analyses and evaluates the general conditions of contract based on a FIDIC, and then proposes a risk mitigation methodology to response those clauses' risk factors reasonably.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• 제8권2호
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• pp.206-211
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• 2017

Background: Self-reported low back pain (LBP) has been evaluated in relation to material handling lifting tasks, but little research has focused on relating quantifiable stressors to LBP at the individual level. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Composite Lifting Index (CLI) has been used to quantify stressors for lifting tasks. A chemical exposure can be readily used as an exposure metric or stressor for chemical risk assessment (RA). Defining and quantifying lifting nonchemical stressors and related adverse responses is more difficult. Stressor-response models appropriate for CLI and LBP associations do not easily fit in common chemical RA modeling techniques (e.g., Benchmark Dose methods), so different approaches were tried. Methods: This work used prospective data from 138 manufacturing workers to consider the linkage of the occupational stressor of material lifting to LBP. The final model used a Bayesian random threshold approach to estimate the probability of an increase in LBP as a threshold step function. Results: Using maximal and mean CLI values, a significant increase in the probability of LBP for values above 1.5 was found. Conclusion: A risk of LBP associated with CLI values > 1.5 existed in this worker population. The relevance for other populations requires further study.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• 제19권2호
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• pp.401-405
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• 2018

We are living in the age of information and the role of information communication is large. Moreover, the mass commucatioin and the concentration of communication facilities could cause a significant impact on the lives of the people in the event of an accident. Therefore, we proposed improvement measures by analyzing the standard manual of risk management for information communication disaster. The disaster management agency should improve the management system, the related law system, the basic planning and response system, and the standard manual for risk management through continuous research into the statute and the standard manual for risk management.