The Internet is becoming increasingly important and essential in medicine. The number of health-related web sites and medical portal sites is rising exponentially in recent years. Now, ensuring that the Internet becomes a suitable and comfortable medium for supporting medical applications is a challenging task. Internet in medicine has changed the health and illness behavior of e-health consumers and the traditional doctor-patient relationship. The patients now can get more health information online and take more responsibilities for their own care (consumer empowerment). E-communication using e-mails between doctors and patients has become popular, but this kind of practice needs a proper standard guideline. Implementation of point-of-care(telemedicine), e-consultation and Internet prescription evokes ethical, medicolegal, and social issues and threatens the treaditional medical practice. It is highly recommended that the Korean doctors be familiar with the e-health and e-medicine.
Electronic Mail ; Humans ; Illness Behavior ; Internet* ; Medical Informatics ; Prescriptions ; Telemedicine

No abstract available.
Hepatitis Viruses* ; Hepatitis*

No abstract available.
Diagnosis*

No abstract available.
Child* ; Fetal Growth Retardation* ; Growth Hormone* ; Humans

Stroke is one of the leading causes of death in Korea. According to the report from Korean national statistical office, the mortality rate of stroke was 73.2/100,000 persons in 2000. In Western countries, stroke mortality rates declined gradually from 1970, which accelerated markedly around 1990. Since then, there has been no further decrease in stroke mortality rates until now and the situation has been similar in Korea. In the past, hemorrhagic stroke in Korea similar to other Far East Asian countries. However, the ratio of hemorrhagic to ischemic stroke has been reversed since mid-1980s. This trend might be due to the westernization of diet and life style as well as better control of hypertension. The case fatality rate from one of the large hospital-based stroke registry was 7.2% within 30 days after the onset of acute ischemic stroke, which is similar to those of other series from western countries with an advanced medical care systems. It may be attributed to the inclusion of more asymptomatic or milder patients with small lesions detected by neuroimaging. Importantly, the delay of hospital visit after the onset of stroke and the lower compliance for secondary prevention remain serious problems in managing acute stroke in Korea. Despite recent advances in the diagnosis and management of stroke, there has not been a nationwide population-based epidemiologic data on stroke in Korea. Therefore the application of Internet technology to develop multi center cooperative hospital-based registry could be an important step toward a long-waited nationwide stroke registry.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Cause of Death ; Compliance ; Diagnosis ; Diet ; Epidemiology* ; Far East ; Humans ; Hypertension ; Internet ; Korea* ; Life Style ; Mortality ; Neuroimaging ; Secondary Prevention ; Stroke*

No abstract available.
Intestinal Fistula*

OBJECTIVE: Many cases of fertilization failure after ICSI is attributed to decondensation defect of sperm head, therefore, selection of sperm with well-condensed, fully-matured nucleus is critical for successful fertilization. During mammalian spermiogenesis, replacement of the somatic histones by protamines allows normal sperm nuclear condensation. The degree of condensation can be shown with the aid of acidic aniline blue staining, which is able to discriminate between lysine-rich histones and arginine- or cysteine-rich protamines. The objective of this study was to investigate the possible relation between nuclear maturity of human sperm and hypo-osmotic swelling patterns. Hypo-osmotic swelling test is very simple and convenient test to measure functional integrity of human sperm membrane, and each already tested sperms can be used for fertilization. METHODS: For assessment of sperm nuclear maturity, aniline blue staining was performed on the slides, already undergone hypo-osmotic swelling test in 5 subfertile patients with abnormal semen parameters and 8 fertile donors. After 3 hours swim-up, these procedures were repeated in each cases. RESULTS: Sperms with negative aniline blue were significantly increased after swim-up in each group. There was a significant increase in the proportion of negative aniline blue in sperms with swelling patterns(e+f+g) compared to sperms with non-swelling patterns(a), except swim-up group in subfertile patients. CONCLUSION: Choosing the swelling patterns, rather than non-swelling sperms after hypo-osmotic test may be beneficial for the selection of sperms with well-condensed, mature nucleus and intact membrane.
Fertilization ; Histones ; Humans ; Membranes ; Protamines ; Semen ; Sperm Head ; Sperm Injections, Intracytoplasmic ; Spermatogenesis ; Spermatozoa* ; Tissue Donors

Vascular dementia is defined as a clinical syndrome of acquired intellectual impairment resulting from a brain injury due to a cerebrovascular disorder. It incorporates various vascular pathophysiological mechanisms and changes in the brain, and has diverse cause and clinical manifestations. The main suptypes of vascular dementia include 1) multi-infarct dementia, 2) strategic infarct dementia, and 3) subcortical vascular dementia. Both multi-infarct dementia and strategic infarct dementia show heterogeneity in etiologies, changes of the brain, as well as clinical manifestations. On the contrary, subcortical vascular dementia is suggested to be a more homogenous group. To better understand the clinical features of vascular dementia, cases corresponding to each subtype of vascular dementia are briefly discussed this review.
Brain ; Brain Injuries ; Cerebrovascular Disorders ; Dementia ; Dementia, Multi-Infarct ; Dementia, Vascular* ; Population Characteristics

Chin ; Humans ; Lip ; Witchcraft

No abstract available.
Blood Gas Analysis*