Human brucellosis is a newly emerging infectious disease in Korea, and the number of the patients with this disease has rapidly increased in recent years. To evaluate the most reliable method in diagnosing human brucellosis, a retrospective study was conducted. Medical records of patients admitted or followed-up at the outpatient department of a tertiary care university hospital during the past 5 years were reviewed. Among a total of 32 human brucellosis patients (24 males and 8 females), 21 (65.6%) were positive for standard tube agglutination test (STA) but negative for blood or bone marrow culture, 7 (21.9%) were positive for both STA and culture, and 4 (12.5%) were STA negative but culture positive. Based on these findings, we recommend that physicians include blood and/or bone marrow culture to obtain definitive diagnosis when clinical symptoms and signs strongly suggest the human brucellosis, even when STA is negative.
Agglutination Tests ; Bone Marrow ; Brucellosis ; Communicable Diseases, Emerging ; Humans ; Korea ; Male ; Medical Records ; Outpatients ; Retrospective Studies ; Tertiary Healthcare

Defective or inadequate pelvic floor function is important etiologic factor for urinary stress incontinence and uterine prolapse. Pelvic floor muscle exercise is the mainstream of the nonoperative treatment for female stress urinary incontinence. Especially Vaginal cones have been known as a simple and practical means of improving both pelvic floor muscle strength and genuine stress incontinence using biofeedback mechanism. Forty adult women suffering from mild and moderate stress incontincnce were instructed to exercise their pelvic muscles using vaginal cones. They retained cones of increasing weight in the vagina by contracting pelvic floor muscles for 15 minutes twice a day for 4 weeks. The comparison of pelvic floor muscle function before and after the exercise were assessed by the frequency of incontinence, vaginal digital palpation, vaginal pressure measurement and speculm lift test. The results were as follows; 1. The frequency of incontinence was significantly reduced after the exercise using vaginal cone (P<0.001). 2. Vaginal digital palpation score (strength of vaginal levator muscle) was significantly increased after the exercise using vaginal cone (P<0.001). 3. The vaginal pressure by perineometer was significantly increased after the exercise using vaginal cones (P<0.001). 4. The vaginal lumen during contraction was significantly narrower after the exercise using vaginal cones (P<0.001). 5. The maximal cone weight which patients could hold over 1 minute was significantly increased after the exercise using vaginal cones (P<0.001).
Adult ; Biofeedback, Psychology ; Female ; Humans ; Korea* ; Muscle Strength ; Muscles ; Palpation ; Pelvic Floor* ; Urinary Incontinence* ; Urinary Incontinence, Stress ; Uterine Prolapse ; Vagina