• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2022

The number of patients with many complications grows with the increase of aging population. As the elders and severely ill patients spend most of their time in bed, it leads to Pressure Injuries (PI) such as bedsores. Unfortunately, there is no method to automatically detect changes in patient's posture which leads to the need for a caregiver every set of times when the patient needs to be moved. Many studies are conducted to solve this inefficient problem. Yet, these studies require costly devices or use methods that disturb patient's sleeping environment. Those methods are mostly hard to implement in practice due to these reasons. We propose a method to detect posture using a three-axis acceleration sensor from the wrist band. We developed a wearable watch that measures sleep-related data. We analyzed 40 people's sleep data with a wearable module and watch to measure their postures such as supine, left-side, and right-side. Then, we compared the classified posture from the watch with the wearable module and achieved 90% accuracy. Therefore, we concluded that only by using the wearable watch, we can detect the sleeping position without any new equipment or system to diagnose the patients without discomfort during their daily lives.

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.283-289
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• 2023

The apnea-hypopnea index is widely regarded as a measure of the severity of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a condition characterized by recurrent episodes of apnea or hypopnea during sleep that induce airway collapse. OSA is a catastrophic problem due to the wide range of health issues it can cause, including cardiovascular disease and memory loss. This review was conducted to clarify the roles of various imaging modalities, particularly cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT), in the diagnosis of and preoperative planning for OSA. Unfortunately, 2-dimensional imaging techniques yield insufficient data for a comprehensive diagnosis, given the complex anatomy of the airway. Three-dimensional (3D) imaging is favored as it more accurately represents the patient's airway structure. Although computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging can depict the actual 3D airway architecture, their use is limited by factors such as high radiation dose and noise associated with the scans. This review indicates that CBCT is a low-radiation imaging technique that can be used to incidentally identify patients with OSA, thereby facilitating early referral and ultimately enhancing the accuracy of surgical outcome predictions.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.45-53
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• 1998

Objectives : The change of sleep patterns commonly occurs in association with the pregnancy. This study was to investigate sleep habits during the course of normal pregnancy. Methods : Sleep habits questionnaire was administered to healthy women in their first trimester(TR1) of pregnancy and then the same questionnaire was repeatedly administered during their second(TR2) and third(TR3) trimesters. The following aspects were assessed : patterns of night sleep, daytime status, sleep posture, reasons for sleep alteration, and the experience of any particular parasomnias, as well as sleep problem-related treatment or medication. Data analysis was based on 26 women who maintaind good health throughout their pregnancy and completed the questionnaire three times. Results : In comparisons between each trimester and non-pregnant state, total night sleep time, daytime tiredness, and sleepiness were significantly increased in all trimesters. Sleep latency was significantly decreased in TR1 and TR2, but not in TR3. In addition, refreshed feeling on waking the following day was significantly decreased and the number of awakenings during night sleep was significantly increased in TR3, but not in TR1 and TR2. In comparisons between trimesters, there was a significant increase in sleep latency, daytime sleepiness and the number of awakenings during night sleep and a significant decrease in refreshed feeling on waking the following day in TR3 compared to TR1 and TR2. Over the course of pregnancy, the rate of lateral position during sleep was gradually increased and all the pregnant women took the lateral sleeping posture in TR3. The major reasons for sleep pattern alteration were nausea, vomiting and heartburn in TR1, urinary frequency, fetal movement and ache in hips in TR2, and urinary frequency, fetal movement, cramp in legs and backache in TR3. Conclusion : These findings are expected to be useful for educating pregnant women about sleep hygiene. In future studies, the underlying factors and mechanisms regarding sleep patterns during pregnancy will need to be clarified.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.22-28
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• 2004

Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevalence rate of OSA in subjects whose main sleep complaint is insomnia and to find differential factors of OSA in these insomniac subjects. Method: We reviewed the medical records and polysomnographic findings of patients referred to the Sleep Laboratory at Seoul National University Hospital from January 1996 to December 2002. Four-hundred and seventy subjects complained of insomnia as their main sleep problem (235 males and 235 females, mean age $53.6{\pm}12.4\;years$). First, we investigated the prevalence rate of OSA in these insomniac patients. Second, we compared the clinical and demographic characteristics of the OSA-associated group with those of the non-associated group. Third, we examined whether the degree or presence of differential factors within the OSA group correlate with severity of OSA, as determined by the respiratory disturbance index (RDI). Results: Among 470 insomniac subjects, 125 subjects (26.6%) were diagnosed as OSA by nocturnal polysomnography. OSA-associated subjects were significantly older ($58.4{\pm}12.3\;years$ vs. $51.8{\pm}11.2\;years$, p<0.01), and had significantly higher body mass index (BMI) ($23.4{\pm}3.3\;kg/m^2$ vs. $22.5{\pm}3.1\;kg/m^2$, p=0.44) than non-associated subjects. The OSA-associated group had more subjects with male gender (64.0% vs. 44.9%, p<0.01), hypertension (20.0% vs. 9.3%, p<0.01) or snoring (96.0% vs. 63.5%, p<0.01). Within the OSA-associated group, age had a significant positive correlation with RDI (p=0.01). Conclusion: We found that a considerable portion of patients complaining of insomnia as their main sleep problem were diagnosed as OSA. Snoring, old age, male gender, obesity, and comorbid hypertension were found to be differential factors of OSA in insomniac patients. We suggest that diagnostic efforts including nocturnal polysomnography are needed for insomniac patients with any of the above risk factors of OSA.

• Journal of muscle and joint health
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.27-50
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• 2001

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic systemic autoimmune disease. Although the joints are the major loci of the disease activity, fatigue is a common extraarticular symptom that exists in all gradations of rheumatoid arthritis. Fatigue is defined as a subjective sense of generalized tiredness or exhaustion and has multiple dimensions. Therefore fatigue is a common and frequent problem for those with rheumatoid arthritis. In fact, 88-100% of individuals with rheumatoid arthritis experience fatigue. Especially the degree of fatigue is higher in women than men with rheumatoid arthritis. Despite the importance of fatigue among the patients with rheumatoid arthritis, the mechanism that leads to fatigue in rheumatoid arthritis is not completely understood. This study was intended to test and validate a model to predict fatigue in women with rheumatoid arthritis. Especially it was intended to identify the direct and indirect effects of the variables of pain, disability, depression, sleep disturbance, morning stiffness, and symptom duration to fatigue. Data were collected by questionnaires including Multidimensional Assesment of Fatigue(Tack, 1991), numeric scale of pain, graphic scale of joints, Ritchie Articular Index, Korean Health Assessment Questionnaire(Bae, et al., 1998), Inventory of Function Status(Tulman, et al., 1991), Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression, and Korean Sleep Scale(Oh, et al 1998). The sample consisted of 345 women with a mean duration of rheumatoid arthritis for 10.06 years and a mean age of 49.64 years. SPSS win and Win LISREL were used for the data analysis. Structural equation modeling revealed the overall fit of the model. Pain predicted fatigue directly and indirectly through disability, depression, and sleep disturbance. Disability, sleep disturbance predicted fatigue only directly, while depression only indirectly through disability and sleep disturbance. Also morning stiffness and symptom duration predicted fatigue through disability and depression. All predictors accounted for 65% of the variance of fatigue. Depression, pain, and disability predicted sleep disturbance. Depression had reciprocal relationship with disability and they both were predicted by pain directly and indirectly. In summary, pain, depression, disability, sleep disturbance, morning stiffness, and symptom duration contributed to the fatigue of patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The best predictor of fatigue was pain. This finding indicates that the modification of pain, depression, disability, sleep disturbance, morning stiffness could be nursing intervention for relief or prevention of fatigue.

• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.166-175
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• 2017

Objectives: Shiftwork is known to be one of the common causes of sleep and health problems and finally causes the decreased quality of life. The purpose of this study was to investigate the sleep patterns of shift-working and daytime psychiatric nurses using actigraphy and compare it with subjective assessment for sleep. Methods : Twenty-three shift-working and 25 daytime nurses were enrolled. They rated their sleep quality using Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index(PSQI) and other self-rating scales were measured for psychosocial aspects. Actigraphy was applied to the subjects for a total of 7 days to measure the sleep parameters. They also wrote sleep diaries during the period of wearing actigraphy. Sleep-related parameters of actigraphy, global score and components of PSQI, and the results of other self-rating scales were compared between shift-working and daytime nurses. Results : Although the global score of PSQI did not show significant difference, the PSQI components showed significant differences between two groups: the shift-working nurses showed lower sleep quality, more sleep disturbance and hypnotic medication use, and worsened daytime dysfunction than daytime nurses. The shift-working nurses showed significantly shorter total time in bed and total sleep time, lower sleep efficiency, and longer average awakening time than those of daytime nurses in actigraphy. Conclusions : The results showed that shift-working nurses experienced more sleep disturbances in both subjective and objective aspects of sleep than daytime nurses. This study also suggests that actigraphy may be useful to measure the objective aspects of sleep that are difficult to assess with subjective questionnaires alone.

• Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.306-319
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• 2013

Objectives The purpose of this study was to find correlations between gastrointestinal disorders, pain, sleep disorder, fatigue, and to figure out characteristics of fatigue in Sasang Constitution using medical devices data. Methods Sixty three subjects were divided into fatigue group and non-fatigue group, both groups had to undergo blood tests, questionnaire, Sasang constitutional analysis tool (SCAT), pulse wave analyzer examination, heart rate variability examination, nail fold capillary microscopic examination. Results 1) The results of questionnaire about fatigue, gastrointestinal disorder, pain, sleep disorder, quality of life had significant differences between fatigue and non-fatigue groups. 2) Soeumin had more serious gastrointestinal problem and Soyangin had more serious sleep disorder in fatigue groups than non-fatigue groups. 3) According to blood test results, there was no difference between fatigue and non-fatigue groups. 4) Elastic parameter of pulse wave analyzer and nail fold capillary microscopic examination showed significant differences between fatigue and non-fatigue groups in Soyangin. Conclusions We reach the conclusion that fatigue is usually accompanied by gastrointestinal disorder, pain, sleep disorder, deterioration in the quality of life. In Soeumin, treating gastrointestinal disorders can be helpful for treatment of fatigue. In Soyangin, improving sleep disorder may be more effective way to treat fatigue.

• 한국ITS학회:학술대회논문집
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• v.2007 no.10
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• pp.225-229
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• 2007

Recently, wireless sensor networks are deployed in various applications range from simple environment monitoring systems to complex systems, which generate large amount of information, like motion monitoring, military, and telematics systems. Although wireless sensor network nodes are operated with low-power 8bit processor to execute simple tasks like environment monitoring, the nodes in these complex systems have to execute more difficult tasks. Generally, MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks attempt to reduce the energy consumption using duty cycling mechanism which means the nodes periodically sleep and wake. However, in the duty cycling mechanism. a node should wait until the target node wakes and the sleep latency increases as the number of hops increases. This sleep latency can be serious problem in complex and sensitive systems which require high speed data transfer like military, wing of airplane, and telematics. In this paper, we propose a solution for reducing transmission latency through distributed duty cycling (DDC) in wireless sensor networks. The proposed algorithm is evaluated with real-deployment experiments using CC2420DBK and the experiment results show that the DDC algorithm reduces the transmission latency significantly and reduces also the energy consumption.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.11
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• pp.415-426
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of health status on sleep quality and quality of life among elderly patients in geriatric hospitals. A survey was held to the elderly patient of 5 geriatric hospitals in Kyunggi-do and Busan from May 8 to May 28, 2013. As result of factor analysis, the health status divided to the 7 domain: Emotional function, Strength, Daily activity, social role, Change of body, Social function and pain. Pain and Emotional function revealed the negative effect on sleep quality and Change of body and Daily activity were positive effect on quality of life. In conclusion, it is need to improve sleep quality through finding pain and emotional problem in elderly patient, and in order to upgrade nursing in geriatric hospitals, it have to develop nursing strategies considering the geriatric hospital for health screening and health promotion to take care of daily activity and change of older's body.

• Annals of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
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• v.34
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• pp.8.1-8.11
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• 2022

Background: As self-employed workers are vulnerable to health problems, this study aimed to analyze mental health problems and sleep disturbances among self-employed workers compared with paid workers in Korea. Methods: A total of 34,750 workers (23,938 paid workers and 10,812 self-employed workers) were analyzed from the fifth Korean Working Condition Survey, which included 50,205 households collected by stratified sampling in 2017. To compare mental health problems and sleep disturbance among self-employed workers and paid workers, multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed. Results: The odds ratio in self-employed workers compared with paid workers was 1.25 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.09-1.42) for anxiety, 1.11 (95% CI: 1.04-1.17) for overall fatigue, 1.11 (95% CI: 1.04-1.20) for difficulty falling asleep, 1.10 (95% CI: 1.02-1.18) for difficulty maintaining sleep and 1.24 (95% CI: 1.16-1.32) for extreme fatigue after waking up. Conclusions: Self-employed workers in Korea have a higher risk of self-reported mental health problems and sleep disturbances than paid workers. Further studies with a longitudinal design and structured evaluation are required to investigate the causal relationship between health problems and self-employment.