No abstract available.
Animals ; Chitosan* ; Rats* ; Water*

The causes of hypocalcemia in patients suffering from severe infection including sepsis are largely uncertain. So we measured serum albumin, total protein, cholesterol, PTH, and calcitonin of the infection-associated hypocalcemic children and compared with those of normocalcemic children suffering from tsutsugamushi disease. All had normal renal functions and had been admitted to the department of pediatrics of Gyeongsang National University Hospital. Hypocalcemic patients were hypoalbuminemic. Serum total calcium was inappropriately more decreased compared to the decreased amount of serum albumin in the hypocalcemic group. We also observed more frequent incidence of hypocholesterolemia (<100mg/dL) in this group. And serum PTH was appropriately elevated in the hypocalcemic patients. Serum calcitonin was elevated in both groups, but 6 times higher in the hypocalcemic group than in the normocalcemic one. Serum total calcium was positively correlated with serum albumin and negatively correlated with serum PTH and calcitonin.
Calcitonin ; Calcium ; Child ; Cholesterol ; Humans ; Hypoalbuminemia ; Hypocalcemia* ; Incidence ; Pediatrics ; Scrub Typhus ; Sepsis ; Serum Albumin

OBJECTIVES: The objectives of the study were to investigate the school nutrition teachers' perception on their job and to find out recommendations needed for its improvement in order to provide a quality foodservice and nutrition education at schools. METHODS: A total of 219 school nutrition teachers in Seoul were surveyed using self-administered questionnaires. RESULTS: The perceived importance of the 16 job duties was rated 3.8 based on a 5-point scale (1: very unimportant - 5: very important). The importance of six duties including nutrition management, production management, nutrition education, and food safety management were rated over 4 point but that of record-keeping for documents, official reporting, and service management was rated the lowest. Importance-Performance Analysis showed that nutrition management, receiving/storage management, production management, menu management, food safety management, and equipment/facilities management should be emphasized to maintain the current performance of duties. The performance of the nutrition education and counseling needed to be improved since the importance scores were greater than average but the performance scores were lower than the average. Official reporting and miscellaneous jobs were rated the highest for simplification need. More than half of the respondents agreed that equipment/facilities management, miscellaneous jobs, service staff supervision, and service line supervision could be allocated to other school departments. CONCLUSIONS: School nutrition teachers should invest more time and resources on their core job duties such as nutrition management, production management, food safety management, and nutrition education for providing quality foodservice and nutrition education. To reflect the environmental changes of school foodservice, a reasonable staffing index of school nutrition teachers needs to be developed. In addition, hiring an assistant or implementing school nutrition teacher internship programs can be useful to reduce workloads of the nutrition teachers.
Counseling ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Education ; Food Safety ; Humans ; Internship and Residency ; Organization and Administration ; Seoul*

Syringomyelia was described by Etienne et al in 1954 and was named by Ollivier in 1827 by reason of the pathologic cavitation of cord. Also it is considered a very chronic and irregulary progressive disease of the spinal cord of unknown cause which has predilection for the cervical and lumbar enlargements. The patient of 19 years old male had been suffered from the painless, severe swelling and instability of right elbow after trauma on right elbow, aud had complained of the sensory and temperature dissociation, muscle weakness with clawing hand in right upper extremity and scoliosis of mild degree. These symptoms and findings were same as those of the classic syringomyelia. Therefore the syningomyelia which is relatively rare in incidence will be reviewed by this report with the references.
Animals ; Elbow ; Hand ; Hoof and Claw ; Humans ; Incidence ; Male ; Muscle Weakness ; Scoliosis ; Spinal Cord ; Syringomyelia ; Upper Extremity

BACKGROUND: Despite the fact that adolescent smokers are increasing in Korea, an effective smoking cessation program is not widely available. The purpose of the present study was to develop and evaluate a short term smoking cessation program. METHODS: The subjects involved in the smoking cessation program were 89 students from 9 different middle and high schools located in Seoul. They were referred to our program by their school teacher as a penalty for smoking in school. The duration of the program was a total of 270 minutes and the program was carried out in 3 sessions during a period of one week. The program included cigarette related experiments and life skills enhancement training, such as self-assertiveness, cigarette refusal skills and self esteem enhancement. The students considered to be smoke free at the end of the program were those who declared themselves to be smoke free and achieved an expiratory CO level of less than 8 ppm. The stage of smoking cessation was also assessed at the beginning to later evaluate if any progress in stage had occurred. Certification was given to those who succeeded in meeting the smoke free criteria. The students who were not able to meet the smoke free criteria were given the certification only under the condition that they achieve a level of expiratory CO measurement close th that of a nonsmoker's. RESULTS: Eighty seven students out of the 89 received the certification and 90.7% had attempted smoking cessation during the program. 39.1% Among, met the smoke free criteria used in this study. There was a significant difference between those who declared to be smoke free (54.1%) on the questionnaire and those who actually met the smoke free criteria. There was an average of a 0.75 stage advancement in terms of the stage of smoking cessation (P<0.005). CONCLUSIONS: The program yielded high smoking cessation attempt and cessation rate in spite of the short duration of the program.
Adolescent* ; Certification ; Disulfiram ; Humans ; Korea ; Self Concept ; Seoul ; Smoke* ; Smoking Cessation* ; Smoking* ; Tobacco Products ; Tobacco Use Cessation

This study amis for examines the actual physical symptom and stress in caregivers of patients with cerebrovascular disease. The data were collected by a survey conducted from August to September, 1997 which included 65 caregivers of cerebrovascular disease patient in 4 hospitals located in Seoul. The caregiver's stress was measured by Choi(1992)'s instrument and the actual physical symptoms were investigated. The data were analyzed using ANOV, Scheffe test, pearson correlation coefficient and stepwise multiple regression. The results were as follows : 1. The mean number of caregiver's physical symptom was 3.5. There were significantly higher number of physical symptom in women, those of who have a religious affiliation, those of two perceive their own health status perceived s bad, and those of two perceived their patients disease condition as serious than in their counterparts. Also, the number of caregiver's physical symptom was significantly higher in caregivers whose patients have a paralysis symptom and the disease onset as spontaneous. 2. The average of caregiver's stress was 57.9. The caregiver's stress was the highest in between the ages of 50 and 59. There were also significantly higher level of stress in women, those of two perceived the disease condition of their patient as serious than in counterparts. 3. The most common caregiver's physical symptom was fatigue(87.7%). This was followed by insomnia(58.5%) and muscle (47.4%). 4. Caregiver's physical symptom was positively correlated with caregiver's stress and negatively correlated with patient's activity of daily life. 5. The most important variable affecting the caregiver's physical symptom was patient's activity of daily life which accounted for 12.7% of the total variance in stepwise multiple regression analysis. The most important variable affecting the caregiver's stress was the patient disease condition perceived by the caregiver that accounted for 12.1% of the total variance.
Caregivers* ; Female ; Humans ; Paralysis ; Seoul

PURPOSE: Diabetic macular edema is one of major causes leading to visual loss and it is difficult to be quantified. We investigated a volumetric quantification of retinal thickness change before and after focal laser photocoagulation with Heidelberg Retina Tomograph (HRT). METHODS: Ten patients who were diagnosed as diabetic retinopathy with clinically significant macular edema (CSME) in only one eye and treated with focal laser photocoagulation were studied. The opposite eyes which had no CSME were studied as control group. In the eyes which had CSME, the volume above reference plane (VARP) bounded by three consecutive circle centered at the fovea (diameter 1, 2, and 3 mm) were measured. The retinal thickness of control group was also measured with the same method. We performed focal laser photocoagulation for the eyes which had CSME and measured VARP at 1, 2, and 3 months after laser treatment. RESULTS: Three months after laser treatment, the VARP of treated eyes measured in each diameter was significantly decreased, however, there was no significant difference in control group. There was no significant difference in visual acuity change between before and 3 months after laser treatment. CONCLUSION: From the above results, we concluded that HRT could be used to quantify the change of diabetic macular edema before and after laser treatment.
Diabetic Retinopathy ; Humans ; Light Coagulation* ; Macular Edema* ; Retina ; Retinaldehyde ; Visual Acuity

This research was performed to evaluate the effects of nutrition education on food waste reduction at school food service. A dietitian conducted nutrition education on environmental protection and proper eating attitude and poor eating habits for 3rd and 5th graders at an elementary school in Seoul. The effectiveness of the education was evaluated by surveying the students before and after the education; 375 responses were analyzed. A questionnaire was designed to compare changes of the students' attitudes and plate waste before and after education. Plate wastes of boiled black rice(p<0.05), potato soup(p<0.05), amaranthus herb salad(p<0.01), and cabbage kimchi(p<0.05) decreased significantly after education. Students' eating attitudes improved significantly(t= -6.22, p<0.01) after nutrition education. Major reasons the students did not eat all foods they were served were large portion sizes (30.59%), low menu preference (29.79%), and tastes (17.82%). The menus with high plate waste rates were cooked vegetable items (35.64%) and soup items (26.6%). After education, students' attitudes on 'food waste pollutes the Earth(p=0.013)', 'food preparation for birthday parties(p<0.01)', and 'restaurant selection for eating out (p<0.01)' changed significantly. After education, plate waste and portion sizes that the students perceived were not negatively correlated. In conclusion, nutrition education on proper eating habits and source reduction is an effective method to reduce food waste generation and to improve students' eating attitudes and awareness on environment.
Amaranthus ; Brassica ; Natural Resources ; Eating ; Education* ; Food Services ; Humans ; Nutritionists ; Portion Size ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Seoul ; Solanum tuberosum ; Vegetables

Leg length discrepancy in the growing children was developed by multiple causes; such as congenital, infection, traumatic, and mechanical facotrs etc. The discrepancy have been treated by several methods including bony lengthening which is preferable method, but epiphysiodesis also has been one of the valuable methods in which was applied to the treatment of mild to moderate leg length discrepancy in the growing children. We report on patients(15 cases) with leg length discrepancy treated by percutaneous epiphysiodesis since July 1986. There were 8 males and 7 females and the average age of them was 12.6 years old. And we also performed an experimental study which was to find out the effectiveness of the pereutaneous physeal destruction comparing the techningues between curette and drill in the bony models. The causes of leg length discrepancy were trauma in 8 cases and osteomyelitis in 2 cases, congenital dislocation of the hip in 2 cases, poliomyelitis, Legg-Galve-Perthes disease, congenital hemihypertropy in each 1 case. The average preoperative leg length discrepancy was 2.6cm(range:1.9-3.7cm), and average anticipated discrepancy without operation have been 3.7cm(range:2.2-6.3cm) at maturity. The final discrepancy was 0.9cm after 43 months follow-up. According to the result by experimental study, percutaneous epiphysiodesis with curette technique would be more effective and safe than drill thchnique. Percutaneous epiphysiodesis might be one of the useful methods for the treatment of mild to moderate degree of leg length discrepancy in the growing children, and also could be applied combining with bony lengthening for treatment of severe degree of leg length discrepancy.
Child ; Dislocations ; Female ; Follow-Up Studies ; Hip ; Humans ; Leg ; Male ; Methods ; Osteomyelitis ; Poliomyelitis

The value of ultrasonography and percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography in determining the site and etiology of biliary obstruction with surgical jaundice was studied in 30 patients. All diagnoses were subsequently made by surgery and pathology. The results were as follows; 1. In ultrasonography, the site of obstruction was delineated in 46%, while the etiology of the lesion was established in 40%, In comparison, percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography delineated the site in 100% and the etilogy in 93%. 2. Although the percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography is invasive to the human body, it is considered to be the single procedure of choicein the managment of the patient with biliary obstructive jaundice because of its diagnostic accuracy, technical simplicity and relative safety.
Cholangiography ; Diagnosis ; Human Body ; Humans ; Jaundice ; Jaundice, Obstructive ; Pathology ; Ultrasonography