No abstract available.
Upper Extremity Deep Vein Thrombosis

A blind, comparative clinical study was performed prospectively to examine the correlation between image quality of CT scan in terms of contrast enhancement effect and amount of intravenous contrast media. A total of 357 patients were randomized into two groups. Ionic high-osmolality contrast media (68% meglumine ioglicate) was administered intravenously as 100ml bolus in one group and as 50 ml bolus in the other group. Statistically significant differences of image quality were found in CT scans of the brain, head and neck, chest and abdomen(p<0.05). However in the pelvis, difference was not statistically significant. (p>0.05). We suggest that amount of contrast media may be reduced in pelvis CT without significant degradation of image quality.
Brain ; Clinical Study ; Contrast Media* ; Head ; Humans ; Meglumine ; Neck ; Pelvis ; Prospective Studies ; Thorax ; Tomography, X-Ray Computed*

Although severe paraquat poisoning is fatal, intensive immunosuppression can be successful in selected patients. We report the case of a 33-yr-old patient who was poisoned by paraquat and developed multi-organ failure, progressive hypoxemia, and pulmonary fibrosis. The patient was successfully treated with four courses of immunosuppressive pulse therapy. The patient presented to the hospital 2.5 hours after ingesting 2 mouthfuls of paraquat. The serum level of paraquat was 10.40 microg/mL at 3 hours and 3.36 microg/mL at 10 hours after ingestion, which is predictive of a fatal outcome. The first course of steroid and cyclophosphamide pulse therapy was initiated after hemoperfusion. During the hospital course, the patient showed progressive hypoxemia with pulmonary fibrosis. Accordingly, three additional courses of immunosuppressive pulse therapy were administered to prevent pulmonary injury. This treatment inevitably led to bone marrow suppression, which was recovered with supportive care. The patient fully recovered after repeated immunosuppressive pulse therapy without residual hypoxemia and was successfully discharged from the hospital.
Anoxia ; Bone Marrow ; Cyclophosphamide ; Eating ; Fatal Outcome ; Hemoperfusion ; Humans ; Immunosuppression ; Lung Injury ; Mouth ; Paraquat ; Pulmonary Fibrosis

OBJECTIVES: X-rays are widely used in medical examinations. In particular, chest X-rays are the most frequent imaging test. However, observations are usually recorded in a free-text format. Therefore, it is difficult to standardize the information provided to construct a database for the sharing of clinical data. Here, we describe a simple X-ray observation entry system that can interlock with an electronic medical record system. METHODS: We investigated common diagnosis indices. Based on the indices, we have designed an entry system which consists of 5 parts: 1) patient lists, 2) image selection, 3) diagnosis result entry, 4) image view, and 5) main menu. The X-ray observation results can be extracted in an Excel format. RESULTS: The usefulness of the proposed system was assessed in a study using over 500 patients' chest X-ray images. The data was readily extracted in a format that allowed convenient assessment. CONCLUSIONS: We proposed the chest X-ray observation entry system. The proposed X-ray observation system, which can be linked with an electronic medical record system, allows easy extraction of standardized clinical information to construct a database. However, the proposed entry system is limited to chest X-rays and it is impossible to interpret the semantic information. Therefore, further research into domains using other interpretation methods is required.
Electronic Health Records ; Humans ; Semantics ; Thorax

PURPOSE: Quality indicators of the National Endoscopy Quality Improvement Program (NEQIP) and outcome measures of endoscopy in the National Cancer Screening Program (NCSP) in Korea are not clear. We evaluated the quality indicators of the revised NEQIP and outcome measures of endoscopy at different types of healthcare facilities participating in the NCSP. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study was conducted between March and August 2018 in primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare facilities that perform endoscopy as a part of the NCSP. Representative endoscopists completed a questionnaire for quality indicators of the NEQIP and provided data on outcome measures for endoscopy. RESULTS: Quality indicators of the NEQIP were mostly acceptable. However, the quality indicators for annual volume of esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) and colonoscopy, training for endoscopy quality improvement by endoscopy nursing staff, colonoscopy reports, documentation of pathologic lesions, quality of endoscopy reprocessing areas, and completion of endoscopy reprocessing education programs were suboptimal. For outcome measures of EGD, the number of photo-documentations and total procedure time were higher at tertiary healthcare facilities than at other facilities (p<0.001 and p=0.023, respectively). For the outcome measures of colonoscopy, colonoscopy completion rate and waiting times for colonoscopy were significantly higher at tertiary healthcare facilities than at other facilities (both p<0.001). CONCLUSION: Outcome measures of endoscopy should be included as quality indicators of NCSP. However, universal outcome measures for all types of healthcare facilities should be established because performance levels of some outcome measures differ among individual healthcare facility types.
Colonoscopy ; Delivery of Health Care ; Early Detection of Cancer ; Education ; Endoscopy ; Endoscopy, Digestive System ; Gastroscopy ; Humans ; Korea ; Mass Screening ; Nursing Staff ; Outcome Assessment (Health Care) ; Quality Improvement ; Tertiary Healthcare

Purpose: Preclinical data indicate that response to radiotherapy (RT) depends on DNA damage repair. In this study, we investigated the role of mutations in genes related to DNA damage repair in treatment outcome after RT. Materials and Methods: Patients with solid tumor who participated in next generation sequencing panel screening using biopsied tumor tissue between October 2013 and February 2019 were reviewed and 97 patients that received RT were included in this study. Best response to RT and the cumulative local recurrence rate (LRR) were compared according to absence or presence of missense, nonsense, and frameshift mutations in ATM and/or BRCA1/2. Results: Of the 97 patients, five patients harbored mutation only in ATM, 22 in only BRCA1/2, and six in both ATM and BRCA1/2 (ATMmtBRCAmt). Propensity score matching was performed to select the control group without mutations (ATMwtBRCAwt, n=33). In total, 90 RT-treated target lesions were evaluated in 66 patients. Highest objective response rate of 80% was observed in ATMmtBRCAmt lesions (p=0.007), which was mostly durable. Furthermore, the cumulative 1-year LRR was the lowest in ATMmtBRCAmt lesions and the highest in ATMwtBRCAwt lesions (0% vs. 47.9%, p=0.008). RT-associated toxicities were observed in 10 treatments with no significant difference among the subgroups (p=0.680). Conclusion Tumors with ATM and BRCA1/2 mutations exhibited superior tumor response and local control after RT compared to tumors without these mutations. The results are hypothesis generating and suggest the need for integrating the tumor mutation profile of DNA repair genes during treatment planning.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: In radiofrequency catheter ablation (RFCA), it is an essential point to understand the characteristics of local electrograms at arrhythmic focus. However controversy exists as whether the unipolar or bipolar electrogram is superior in detecting arrhythmic focus. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: We evaluated the characteristics of unipolar and bipolar electrograms at ventricular tachycardia (VT) origin. Electroanatomical mapping and RFCA were performed in 6 patients with idiopathic VT. 22 sites were enrolled and 6 of them were successful sites. We analyzed the relationship between surface and local electrograms in accordance with success or failure. We also analyzed the morphology of local electrograms. RESULTS: At successful sites of RFCA, point of unipolar onset (22.86+/-10.82 msec vs 5.47+/-26.31 msec, p<0.05) and maximal negative slope (16.57+/-17.46 msec vs -4.00+/-22.77 msec, p<0.05) were recorded earlier than unsuccessful sites. R wave amplitude (0.11+/-0.19 mm vs 0.64+/-0.57 mm, p<0.05) and R/S ratio (0.02+/-0.30 vs 0.18+/-0.26, p<0.05) of unipolar electrograms were smaller at successful sites. R wave duration was shorter at successful sites (6.29+/-8.49 msec vs 11.33+/-6.26 msec) but there was no statistical significance. QRS duration of bipolar electrograms was longer at successful sites (66.14+/-17.93 msec vs 49.07+/-13.11 msec, p<0.05). CONCLUSION: In electranatomical mapping for VT, point of unipolar onset and maximal negative slope could predict local activation time more precisely Unipolar electrograms showed shorter R wave duration and smaller R/S ratio at successful sites of RFCA. We can estimate the focus of VT by using these chracteristics of unipolar and bipolar electrogram.
Catheter Ablation ; Electrophysiology ; Humans ; Tachycardia, Ventricular*

Mucormycosis is a fatal opportunistic fungal infection that typically occurs in immunocompromised patients. The classical manifestation of mucormycosis is a rhinocerebral infection, and although primary gastrointestinal infection is uncommon, it has an extremely high mortality rate in immunocompromised patients. Furthermore, cases of gastrointestinal mucormycosis in an immunocompetent host are rarely reported. Here, we describe our experience of a male patient, with no underlying disease, who succumbed to a bowel infarction caused by intestinal mucormycosis during mechanical ventilatory care for severe pneumonia and septic shock.
Humans ; Immunocompetence ; Immunocompromised Host ; Infarction ; Male ; Mucormycosis ; Pneumonia ; Shock, Septic

Data on the clinical outcomes in deferred coronary lesions according to functional severity have been limited. This study evaluated the clinical outcomes of deferred lesions according to fractional flow reserve (FFR) grade using Korean FFR registry data. Among 1,294 patients and 1,628 lesions in Korean FFR registry, 665 patients with 781 deferred lesions were included in this study. All participants were consecutively categorized into 4 groups according to FFR; group 1: ≥ 0.96 (n = 56), group 2: 0.86–0.95 (n = 330), group 3: 0.81–0.85 (n = 170), and group 4: ≤ 0.80 (n = 99). Primary endpoint was major adverse cardiac events (MACE), a composite of all-cause death, myocardial infarction, and target vessel revascularization. The median follow-up period was 2.1 years. During follow-up, the incidence of MACE in groups 1–4 was 1.8%, 7.6%, 8.8%, and 13.1%, respectively. Compared to group 1, the cumulative rate by Kaplan-Meier analysis of MACE was not different for groups 2 and 3. However, group 4 had higher cumulative rate of MACE compared to group 1 (log-rank P = 0.013). In the multivariate Cox hazard models, only FFR (hazard ratio [HR], 0.95; P = 0.005) was independently associated with MACE among all participants. In contrast, previous history of percutaneous coronary intervention (HR, 2.37; P = 0.023) and diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) (HR, 2.35; P = 0.015), but not FFR, were independent predictors for MACE in subjects with non-ischemic (FFR ≥ 0.81) deferred coronary lesions. Compared to subjects with ischemic deferred lesions, clinical outcomes in subjects with non-ischemic deferred lesions according to functional severity are favorable. However, longer-term follow-up may be necessary.
Acute Coronary Syndrome ; Coronary Artery Disease ; Diagnosis ; Follow-Up Studies ; Humans ; Incidence ; Kaplan-Meier Estimate ; Myocardial Infarction ; Percutaneous Coronary Intervention ; Prognosis ; Proportional Hazards Models

PURPOSE: Croup is known to have epidemics in seasonal and biennial trends, and to be strongly associated with epidemics of parainfluenza virus. However, seasonal and annual epidemics of croup have not been clearly reported in Korea. This study aimed to examine the seasonal/annual patterns and etiologies of childhood croup in Korea during a consecutive 6-year period. METHODS: Pediatric croup data were collected from 23 centers in Korea from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2015. Electronic medical records, including multiplex reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) results, demographics and clinical information were cross-sectionally reviewed and analyzed. RESULTS: Overall, 2,598 childhood croup patients requiring hospitalization were identified during the study period. Among them, a total of 927 who underwent RT-PCR were included in the analysis. Males (61.5%) predominated, and most (63.0%) of them were younger than 2 years of age (median, 19 months; interquartile range, 11–31 months). Peak hospitalization occurred in 2010 and 2012 in even-numbered years, and parainfluenza virus (PIV, 39.7%) was the most common cause of childhood croup requiring hospitalization, followed by respiratory syncytial virus (14.9%), human rhinovirus (12.5%), Mycoplasma pneumonaie (10.6%), and human coronavirus (7.3%). CONCLUSION: It is concluded that croup hospitalization has a biennial pattern in even-numbered years. PIV may be the most common cause of childhood croup; however, croup epidemics could be attributed to other viruses.
Child ; Coronavirus ; Croup ; Demography ; Electronic Health Records ; Hospitalization ; Humans ; Korea ; Male ; Mycoplasma ; Paramyxoviridae Infections ; Polymerase Chain Reaction ; Respiratory Syncytial Viruses ; Retrospective Studies ; Reverse Transcription ; Rhinovirus ; Seasons