No abstract available.
Emergencies* ; Emergency Service, Hospital*

Carbon Monoxide poisoning is one of the most serious Public health problems in Korea. The incidence rate officially reported has been known to be the highest in the world. This high incidence is mainly due to the wide prevalence of anthracite coal briquette as the domestic fuel for unique Korean heating system called "ondol." The coal briquette gas contains around 3-5% of Carbon Monoxide. A nation-wide effort to eliminate or reduce this serious hazards has produced little effect and the most hospitals are offering very ineffective measures such as oxygen inhalation through nasal catheter. Author has believed that this preventable accident should be approached by the secondary preventive measure because of our socio-economic status do not allow us optimistic results from primary preventive measure as far as the problem of CO poisoning is concerned. Author has treated 466 patients during 30 months period by Hyperbaric Oxygenation at Seoul National University Hospital. The results found are as follows. 1. Female has a higher incidence rate than male and the age group between 15-29 years showed highest incidence. 2. The recovery time depends on the time when the patients arrived at hospital. Earlier the arrival time, shorter the recovery time. 3. Some objective signs are representing typical physiological response to tissue hypoxia. 4. Therapeutic effectiveness of Hyperbaric Oxypenation is confirmed by such indices as recovery rate, Admission rate and average stay in hospital. Futher, these results are cocordant with other reports on the clinical value of Hyperbaric Oxygenation in the treatment of CO poisoning.
Anoxia ; Carbon Monoxide ; Carbon Monoxide Poisoning ; Catheters ; Coal ; Female ; Heating ; Hot Temperature ; Humans ; Hyperbaric Oxygenation* ; Incidence ; Inhalation ; Korea ; Male ; Oxygen ; Poisoning* ; Prevalence ; Public Health ; Seoul

Carbon Monoxide poisoning is one of the most serious Public health problems in Korea. The incidence rate officially reported has been known to be the highest in the world. This high incidence is mainly due to the wide prevalence of anthracite coal briquette as the domestic fuel for unique Korean heating system called "ondol." The coal briquette gas contains around 3-5% of Carbon Monoxide. A nation-wide effort to eliminate or reduce this serious hazards has produced little effect and the most hospitals are offering very ineffective measures such as oxygen inhalation through nasal catheter. Author has believed that this preventable accident should be approached by the secondary preventive measure because of our socio-economic status do not allow us optimistic results from primary preventive measure as far as the problem of CO poisoning is concerned. Author has treated 466 patients during 30 months period by Hyperbaric Oxygenation at Seoul National University Hospital. The results found are as follows. 1. Female has a higher incidence rate than male and the age group between 15-29 years showed highest incidence. 2. The recovery time depends on the time when the patients arrived at hospital. Earlier the arrival time, shorter the recovery time. 3. Some objective signs are representing typical physiological response to tissue hypoxia. 4. Therapeutic effectiveness of Hyperbaric Oxypenation is confirmed by such indices as recovery rate, Admission rate and average stay in hospital. Futher, these results are cocordant with other reports on the clinical value of Hyperbaric Oxygenation in the treatment of CO poisoning.
Anoxia ; Carbon Monoxide ; Carbon Monoxide Poisoning ; Catheters ; Coal ; Female ; Heating ; Hot Temperature ; Humans ; Hyperbaric Oxygenation* ; Incidence ; Inhalation ; Korea ; Male ; Oxygen ; Poisoning* ; Prevalence ; Public Health ; Seoul

The study in the fild of medical instrument has been out of the interest by any the life scinetist in Korea. Especially the recent developments in the medical electromics are remarkable one. Authors planned this study to ascertain the possibility of setting up the thermistor thermometer with available accessories of demetic products including some specific foreign assembly parts. By proper use of the thermistor as one of the wheatstone bridge, we could detect the resistance variations due to the environmental temperature variance. The intensive care for the bridge circuit and compensation scheme was required. The calibration procedure adopted here makes it possible to read the current as the temperature. The temperature range was determined by the examination and construction of the graph of the resistance-temperature, the reduction of excessive current and self-heating of the thermistor were made. Renovation in response-velocity was under taken too. This electronic thermometer was designed and assembled by the circuitry developed in accordance with the maximum availability of domestic products with some foreign-made parts. The result of our experiment showed very stable function and proved to be the most promising item in the actual application as long as the thermistor is concerned.
Calibration ; Compensation and Redress ; Critical Care ; Korea ; Thermometers*

In vivo ethane production in rats was used as an index of oxygen toxicity. The rats were allocated to four exposure conditions; hyperbaric oxygenation (HBO=5 ATA, 100% O2), normobaric oxygenation (NBO=1 ATA, 100% O2), hyperbaric aeration (HBA=5 ATA, 21% O2) and normobaric aeration (NBA=1 ATA, 21% O2). After 120 minutes of exposure, the rats exposed to high concentration and/or high pressure oxygen exhaled significantly larger amounts of ethane than those exposed to NBA, and the differences in ethane production between any two groups were statistically significant (p<0.01). This finding supports the hypothesis that hypothesis that hyperoxia increase oxygen free-radicals and the radicals produce ethane as a result of lipid peroxidation. It is notable that the ethane exhalation level of the HBA group was significantly higher than that of the NBO group. This difference could not be accounted for by the alveolar oxygen partial pressure difference between the two groups.
Animals ; Ethane* ; Exhalation* ; Hyperbaric Oxygenation ; Hyperoxia* ; Lipid Peroxidation* ; Oxygen ; Partial Pressure ; Rats

No abstract available.
Oxygen* ; Poisoning*

No abstract available.
Carboxyhemoglobin*

Carbon monoxide poisoning is one of the most serios health problems in Korea, because we have been encountered with the highest incidence of CO poisoning in the world due to the unique heating system in home called "ondal". We opened Hyperbaric chamber unit in the Seoul National University Hospital last Jan, 1969. We have treated 848 patients as of Sept. 30., 1972, around 44 months period. We collected the informations on the environmental conditions of the place where CO intoxication actually occurred by filling up the questionaire from 505 patients. The following finding were obtained. 1. Age distribution showed that the highest incidence was found in the younger age group between age of 10 to age of 29 in both sex. 2. Sex ratio of the patients was 1:1.14. 3. The socio-economic level of the patient was relatively low. 4. Housewife & housemaid were the major victims of the intoxication in the female patients & in the case of the male patient, occupational backgrounds were diverse. 5. Many patients form the middle class experienced the intoxication bu sleeping at newly built room. 6. Many intoxication has been occurred in the structure of houses where communicating doors are existing between living room & kitchen. 7. All findings obtained taught us again that CO poisoning is the serious by-product of the national fuel policy which put emphasis on the use of coal & socio-economic status is very important parameter in this hazards.
Age Distribution ; Carbon Monoxide Poisoning ; Coal ; Female ; Heating ; Hot Temperature ; Humans ; Hyperbaric Oxygenation* ; Incidence ; Korea ; Male ; Poisoning ; Seoul ; Sex Ratio

Carbon monoxide poisoning is one of the most serios health problems in Korea, because we have been encountered with the highest incidence of CO poisoning in the world due to the unique heating system in home called "ondal". We opened Hyperbaric chamber unit in the Seoul National University Hospital last Jan, 1969. We have treated 848 patients as of Sept. 30., 1972, around 44 months period. We collected the informations on the environmental conditions of the place where CO intoxication actually occurred by filling up the questionaire from 505 patients. The following finding were obtained. 1. Age distribution showed that the highest incidence was found in the younger age group between age of 10 to age of 29 in both sex. 2. Sex ratio of the patients was 1:1.14. 3. The socio-economic level of the patient was relatively low. 4. Housewife & housemaid were the major victims of the intoxication in the female patients & in the case of the male patient, occupational backgrounds were diverse. 5. Many patients form the middle class experienced the intoxication bu sleeping at newly built room. 6. Many intoxication has been occurred in the structure of houses where communicating doors are existing between living room & kitchen. 7. All findings obtained taught us again that CO poisoning is the serious by-product of the national fuel policy which put emphasis on the use of coal & socio-economic status is very important parameter in this hazards.
Age Distribution ; Carbon Monoxide Poisoning ; Coal ; Female ; Heating ; Hot Temperature ; Humans ; Hyperbaric Oxygenation* ; Incidence ; Korea ; Male ; Poisoning ; Seoul ; Sex Ratio

Emergency medical service is an important part of the health care delivery system, and the optimal allocation of resources and their efficient utilization are essentially demanded. Since these conditions are the prerequisite to prompt treatment which, in turn, will be crucial for life saving and in reducing the undesirable sequelae of the event. This study, taking the hyperbaric chamber for carbon monoxide poisoning as an example, is to develop a stochastic approach for solving the problems of optimal allocation of such emergency medical facility in Korea. The hyperbaric chamber, in Korea, is used almost exclusively for the treatment of acute carbon monoxide poisoning, most of which occur at home, since the coal briquette is used as domestic fuel by 69.6 percent of the Korean population. The annual incidence rate of comatous and fatal carbon monoxide poisoning is estimated at 45.5 per 10,000 of coal briquette-using population. It offers a serious public health problem and occupies a large portion of the emergency outpatients, especially in the winter season. The requirement of hyperbaric chambers can be calculated by setting the level of the annual queueing rate, which is here defined as the proportion of the annual number of the queued patients among the annual number of the total patients. The rate is determined by the size of the coal briquette-using population which generate a certain number of carbon monoxide poisoning patients in terms of the annual incidence rate, and the number of hyperbaric chambers per hospital to which the patients are sent, assuming that there is no referral of the patients among hospitals. The queueing occurs due to the conflicting events of the "arrival" of the patients and the "service" of the hyperbaric chambers. Here, we can assume that the length of the service time of hyperbaric chambers is fixed at sixty minutes, and the service discipline is based on "first come, first served". The arrival pattern of the carbon monoxide poisoning is relatively unique, because it usually occurs while the people are in bed. Diurnal variation of the carbon monoxide poisoning can hardly be formulated mathematically, so empirical cumulative distribution of the probability of the hourly arrival of the patients was used for Monte Carlo simulation to calculate the probability of queueing by the number of the patients per day, for the cases of one, two or three hyperbaric chambers assumed to be available per hospital. Incidence of the carbon monoxide poisoning also has strong seasonal variation, because of the four distinctive seasons in Korea. So the number of the patients per day could not be assumed to be distributed according to the Poison distribution. Testing the fitness of various distributions of rare event, it turned out to be that the daily distribution of the carbon monoxide poisoning fits well to the Polya-Eggenberger distribution. With this model, we could forecast the number of the poisonings per day by the size of the coal-briquette using population. By combining the probability of queueing by the number of patients per day, and the probability of the number of patients per day in a year, we can estimate the number of the queued patients and the number of the patients in a year by the number of hyperbaric chambers per hospital and by the size of coal briquette-using population. Setting 5 percent as the annual queueing rate, the required number of hyperbaric chambers was calculated for each province and for the whole country, in the cases of 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent of the treatment rate which stand for the rate of the patients treated by hyperbaric chambers among the patients who are to be treated. Findings of the study were as follows. 1. Probability of the number of patients per day follows Polya-Eggenberger distribution. Hourly arrival pattern of the patients turned out to be bimodal, the large peak was observed in 7:00~8:00 a.m., and the small peak in 11:00~12:00 p.m. 2. In the cases of only one or two hyperbaric chambers installed per hospital, the annual queueing rate will be at the level of more than 5 percent. Only in case of three chambers, however, the rate will reach 5 percent when the average number of the patients per day is 0.481. 3. According to the results above, a hospital equipped with three hyperbaric chambers will be able to serve 166, 485, 83, 242, 55, 495 and 41, 620 of population, when the treatment rate are 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent. 4. The required number of hyperbaric chambers are estimated at 483, 962, 1,441 and 1,923 when the treatment rate are taken as 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent. Therefore, the shortage are respectively turned out to be 312, 791, 1,270 and 1,752. The author believes that the methodology developed in this study will also be applicable to the problems of resource allocation for the other kinds of the emergency medical facilities.
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning* ; Carbon Monoxide* ; Carbon* ; Coal ; Delivery of Health Care ; Emergencies* ; Emergency Medical Services ; Emergency Treatment* ; Humans ; Incidence ; Korea* ; Outpatients ; Poisoning ; Public Health ; Referral and Consultation ; Resource Allocation ; Seasons