Congenital scoliosis is defined as a lateral curvature of the spine caused by congenital anomalies of the vertebral development. In this study seventeen congenital scoliosis patients seen and treated by either Milwaukee brace or surgical intervention at Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Seoul National University Hospital from December 1972 to April 1978 were evaluated according to frequency of the curve pattern, character of the deformity, method of treatment and its correctability. The following results were obtained in this study. 1. Age distribution was from 2 to 39 years and mean age was 13.4 years. 2. The most common deformity pattern was hemivertebra in 8 cases (47.1%), unilateral unsegmented bar in 4 (23.6%) and mixed type in 3 (17.6%). 3. The most common curve level was thoracic in 6 cases (35.3%), followed by thoracolumbar in 4 (23.5%) and lumbar in 4 (23.5%). 4. The best corrected type by Milwaukee brace was trapezoid vertebra (29.4%) and then mixed type(26.1%), followed by block type (20%) and hemivertebra(2.3%). 5. The operative treatment was performed in the cases of unilateral bar and progressive type with Milwaukee brace. In terms of the correctability of the curvature, the surgical intervention was better than the conservative treatment, with the result of its average correction of 33.5% that is compared with 15.9% of Milwaukee brace. 6. Halofemoral traction was effectively applied in the cases of rigid and severe curve; the initial curve 76.3 degress with 21.3% of flexibility. 7. Loss of correction in operative treatment was 2.3 degrees (6.5%).
Age Distribution ; Braces ; Congenital Abnormalities ; Humans ; Methods ; Orthopedics ; Pliability ; Scoliosis ; Seoul ; Spine ; Traction

No abstract available.
Angiography ; Coronary Angiography* ; Coronary Vessels ; Echocardiography* ; Mucocutaneous Lymph Node Syndrome*

Hemangiopericytoma is a rare mesenchymal neoplasm, accounting for about 1% of vascular tumor. Hemangiopericytoma is known to be derived from the vascular pericyte and occurs most commonly lower extremities, pelvis and retroperitoneum. Surgical radical excision is the treatment of choice. Because of malignant features of hemangiopericytoma, long term and close follow-up is important. We report a case of successfully resected retroperitoneal hemangiopericytoma.
Accounting ; Follow-Up Studies ; Hemangiopericytoma ; Lower Extremity ; Pelvis ; Pericytes

Clostridium perfringens is an anaerobe responsible for a wide range of diseases in animals and humans. Symptoms associated with C. perfringens food poisoning are caused by enterotoxin expressed only during sporulation of C. perfringens. It has been known that only 6% of global C. perfringens isolates carry the enterotoxin gene. We found 2 strains of enterotoxigenic C. perfringens out of 33 strains isolated from various sources in Korea using PCR. It was also found that these two strains were both type A that were strongly associated with food poisoning by checking the presence of four major lethal toxins (a-, B-, e-, l-toxin) using PCR. These results suggest that foodborne illness caused by C. perfringens may be common in Korea and that public education is necessary to prevent contamination of foods by this organism.
Animals ; Clostridium perfringens* ; Clostridium* ; Education ; Enterotoxins* ; Foodborne Diseases ; Humans ; Korea* ; Polymerase Chain Reaction

No abstract available.
Echocardiography* ; Echocardiography, Doppler, Color ; Ligation*

No abstract available.
Child ; Coronary Vessels* ; Echocardiography ; Humans

No abstract available.
Child ; Humans

Several observation suggest that the antimelanocyte autoantibodies could play a role in melanocyte destruction. Some experiments indicate that melanocyte antibodies from patients with vitiligo can kill melanocyte in vitro. In these experiments, we demonstrated that vitiligo patient's sera containing antimelanocyte antibodies can lyse cultured human melanocytes by complement activation. Melanocyte cytotoxicity was measured using the ethidium bromide/ acridine orange viability assay. Significant melanocyte cytotoxicity was seen in sera from patients with both active and inactive vitiligo(p<0.01). Melanocyte cytotoxicity measured with complement-mediated cytotoxicity decreased after systemic steroid treatment(p<0.05) ; however melanocyte cytotoxicity showed no significant change with systemic PUVA therapy.
Acridine Orange ; Antibodies ; Autoantibodies* ; Complement Activation ; Ethidium ; Humans ; Melanocytes ; PUVA Therapy ; Vitiligo*

Hirayama disease usually selectively involves lower cervical myotomes (C8, T1). Thus, patients usually manifest with atrophy and weakness of small hand muscle. Predominant isolated involvement of proximal arm is rarely reported in Hirayama disease. Here, we report a case of Hirayama disease who had focal weakness and wasting, mainly confined to right biceps brachii muscle, with prominent shifting of dural sac in C4-5 segment by dynamic flexion magnetic resonance imaging (dfMRI), which may explain this unusual distribution of the disease.
Amyotrophy, monomelic

Spondylometaphyseal dysplasia (SMD) is an extremely rare, which affects the spine and metaphy-ses of the tubular bones on terms of enchondrogenesis. Children who had Kozlowski dwarfism, type of SMD are not recognized until they reach school age since they have normal clinical feature, weight and size in early childhood. Authors experienced a typical case of Kozlowski type of SMD in a 10 years old male who had i) generalized platyspondyly with anterior tapering of vertebrae ii) generalized metaphyseal dysplasia iii) minimal changes in the carpal and tarsal bones. This case is to be reported with review of references.
Child ; Dwarfism ; Humans ; Male ; Spine ; Tarsal Bones