Colonic atresia (CA) is the rare cause of intestinal obstruction, and diagnosis of CA is difficult. But only few research has been performed, so little information has been available. The purposes of this study was to analyze the clinical findings of CA so that help physicians make decision properly. Children with CA who were treated at the division of pediatric surgery at Asan Medical Center in the period from January 1989 to December 2011 were evaluated retrospectively. A total of 6 children were treated with CA. These accounted for 2.7% of all gastrointestinal atresias managed in Asan Medical Center. Only one child was premature and low birth weight, the others were fullterm neonates and showed normal birth weight. Vomiting and abdominal distension were common symptoms and simple X-ray and barium study were used for diagnose of CA. But only 66.7% of the babies were diagnosed as CA pre-operatively. And 2 children out of 6 underwent re-operation due to missed CA at the time of the first operation. In aspect of types of atresia, the type IIIa were two, type IV were two, type I was one case, and one child showed rectal stenosis due to rectal web. Various operations were done according to individual findings and associated diseases. The 50% (n=3) of children underwent the primary anastomosis and the others (n=3) underwent colostomy first and staged operation later for missed CA or associated disease. All of them were recovered any significant complications. Therefore, the prognosis of CA is satisfactory if diagnosis and surgical management could be made properly. But because of the low incidence of CA, delay of diagnosis and treatment may occur. To prevent delay of diagnosis, we suggest prompt evaluation of doubtful infant and careful inspection of distal patency of bowel including whole colon and rectum when operating patients with intestinal atresia at any level.
Barium ; Birth Weight ; Child ; Colon ; Colostomy ; Constriction, Pathologic ; Humans ; Incidence ; Infant ; Infant, Low Birth Weight ; Infant, Newborn ; Intestinal Atresia ; Intestinal Obstruction ; Prognosis ; Rectum ; Retrospective Studies ; Vomiting

BACKGROUND: Rehabilitations in subacute phase are different from acute treatments regarding the characteristics and required resource consumption of the treatments. Lack of accuracy and validity of the Korean Diagnosis Related Group and Korean Out-Patient Group for the acute patients as the case-mix and payment tool for rehabilitation inpatients have been problematic issues. The objective of the study was to develop the Korean Rehabilitation Patient Group (KRPG) reflecting the characteristics of rehabilitation inpatients. METHODS: As a retrospective medical record survey regarding rehabilitation inpatients, 4,207 episodes were collected through 42 hospitals. Considering the opinions of clinical experts and the decision-tree analysis, the variables for the KRPG system demonstrating the characteristics of rehabilitation inpatients were derived, and the splitting standards of the relevant variables were also set. Using the derived variables, we have drawn the rehabilitation inpatient classification model reflecting the clinical situation of Korea. The performance evaluation was conducted on the KRPG system. RESULTS: The KRPG was targeted at the inpatients with brain or spinal cord injury. The etiologic disease, functional status (cognitive function, activity of daily living, muscle strength, spasticity, level and grade of spinal cord injury), and the patient's age were the variables in the rehabilitation patients. The algorithm of KRPG system after applying the derived variables and total 204 rehabilitation patient groups were developed. The KRPG explained 11.8% of variance in charge for rehabilitation inpatients. It also explained 13.8% of variance in length of stay for them. CONCLUSION: The KRPG version 1.0 reflecting the clinical characteristics of rehabilitation inpatients was classified as 204 groups.
Brain ; Classification ; Diagnosis ; Humans ; Inpatients ; Korea ; Length of Stay ; Medical Records ; Muscle Spasticity ; Muscle Strength ; Outpatients ; Rehabilitation* ; Retrospective Studies ; Spinal Cord ; Spinal Cord Injuries

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Gastric juice plays a crucial role in the physiology of the stomach. The aim of this study is to evaluate associations among the pH of gastric juice, atrophic gastritis (AG), intestinal metaplasia (IM), pepsinogen, and Helicobacter pylori infection. METHODS: Gastric biopsies and juice were collected from 46 subjects who underwent endoscopies at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital between November 2011 and March 2013. H. pylori, AG and IM were evaluated, and pepsinogen I or II, I/II ratio, and interleukin (IL)-1β levels were measured. RESULTS: The mean pH of gastric juice was higher in the H. pylori-positive group (n=17) than that in the H. pylori-negative group (n=29) (4.54 vs 2.46, p=0.002). When patients were divided into pH < 3 (n=28) and pH ≥3 (n=18) groups, H. pylori was lower in the pH < 3 group (21.4%) than in the pH ≥3 group (61.1%) (p=0.007). The pH ≥3 group demonstrated AG and IM more frequently than the pH < 3 group in the body (p=0.047 and p=0.051, respectively) but not in the antrum. There were no differences in pepsinogen I or II, I/II ratio, and IL-1β levels between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: There is a relationship between chronic H. pylori infection and gastric juice pH ≥3, which may originate from AG and IM in the body.
Biopsy ; Gastric Juice* ; Gastritis ; Gastritis, Atrophic* ; Helicobacter pylori* ; Helicobacter* ; Humans ; Hydrogen-Ion Concentration* ; Interleukins ; Metaplasia* ; Pepsinogen A ; Physiology ; Seoul ; Stomach

BACKGROUND: The colitis-associated cancer exhibits different characteristics according to sex in the initiation and progression of the tumors. The aim of this study was to investigate the sex-associated difference in the azoxymethane/dextran sulfate sodium (AOM/DSS)-induced colitis-associated cancer model. METHODS: The AOM/DSS ICR mouse model was established to compare male with female, and then the severity of colitis-associated carcinogenesis was examined macroscopically and histologically regarding the number, size, and location of tumors. Subsequently, levels of colonic mucosal cytokine, interleukin (IL)-1β and myeloperoxidase (MPO) were assessed. RESULTS: At the 16th week, the tumor multiplicity and the pro-inflammatory factors differed according to sex. The total tumor number was significantly higher in male (P = 0.020) and the number of large tumors (diameter > 2 mm) was higher in male (P = 0.026). In male, the tumors located more in distal colon (P = 0.001). MPO was significantly higher in AOM/DSS-treated male mice compared to the control group (P = 0.003), whereas the corresponding female group showed no significant change (P = 0.086). Colonic IL-1β level significantly increased in AOM/DSS groups compared to control groups both in male and female (male, P = 0.014; female, P = 0.005). It was higher in male group; however, there was no statistical significance (P = 0.226). CONCLUSIONS: In AOM/DSS murine model, colitis-associated colon tumorigenesis are induced more severely in male mice than female probably by way of inflammatory mediators such as IL-1β and MPO. The sex-related differences at the animal model of colon cancer suggest the importance of approach to disease with sex-specific medicine in human.
Animals ; Carcinogenesis ; Colitis ; Colon* ; Colonic Neoplasms* ; Female ; Humans ; Interleukins ; Male ; Mice* ; Mice, Inbred ICR ; Models, Animal ; Peroxidase ; Sodium

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Optimized regimen has not yet been established for failures of multiple Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) eradication. Hence, we aimed to evaluate the efficacy of rifabutin-based rescue therapy, at least after three eradication failures. METHODS: Twelve patients, who failed in the treatment for H. pylori eradication at least three times, were consecutively enrolled between 2007 and 2015 at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital. The rifabutin-based rescue regimen was consisted of proton pump inhibitor (PPI), rifabutin (150 mg b.i.d.), and amoxicillin (1 g b.i.d.), given for 7 or 14 days. MIC concentration test by the agar dilution method was performed on six patients prior to rifabutin-based rescue therapy. RESULTS: One patient did not take this regimen, and per-protocol (PP) analysis was performed in 11 patients. The overall eradication rate by intention-to-treat and PP analysis with rifabutin-based rescue therapy was 50.0% (6/12 patients) and 54.5% (6/11 patients), respectively. There was no difference of the eradication rate depending on the underlying disease, smoking, alcohol, number of previous eradication failures, and CYP2C19 genotype. All of the six patients were susceptible to rifabutin, but only three of them succeeded in eradicating with H. pylori. Side effects occurred in two patients (18.2%), and compliance was 90.9%. CONCLUSIONS: Even the eradication rate of rifabutin-based rescue therapy was not very good. Rifabutin-based rescue therapy could be considered as a rescue therapy, perhaps as the fourth or the fifth-line treatment option. No correlation of rifabutin sensitivity with eradication success rate of H. pylori suggests that frequent administration of high dose PPI and amoxicillin might be important.
Agar ; Amoxicillin ; Compliance ; Cytochrome P-450 CYP2C19 ; Genotype ; Helicobacter pylori* ; Helicobacter* ; Humans ; Methods ; Proton Pumps ; Rifabutin ; Salvage Therapy ; Seoul ; Smoke ; Smoking

This paper describes a community effort to improve earlier versions of the full-text corpus of Genomics & Informatics by semi-automatically detecting and correcting PDF-to-text conversion errors and optical character recognition errors during the first hackathon of Genomics & Informatics Annotation Hackathon (GIAH) event. Extracting text from multi-column biomedical documents such as Genomics & Informatics is known to be notoriously difficult. The hackathon was piloted as part of a coding competition of the ELTEC College of Engineering at Ewha Womans University in order to enable researchers and students to create or annotate their own versions of the Genomics & Informatics corpus, to gain and create knowledge about corpus linguistics, and simultaneously to acquire tangible and transferable skills. The proposed projects during the hackathon harness an internal database containing different versions of the corpus and annotations.

This paper describes a community effort to improve earlier versions of the full-text corpus of Genomics & Informatics by semi-automatically detecting and correcting PDF-to-text conversion errors and optical character recognition errors during the first hackathon of Genomics & Informatics Annotation Hackathon (GIAH) event. Extracting text from multi-column biomedical documents such as Genomics & Informatics is known to be notoriously difficult. The hackathon was piloted as part of a coding competition of the ELTEC College of Engineering at Ewha Womans University in order to enable researchers and students to create or annotate their own versions of the Genomics & Informatics corpus, to gain and create knowledge about corpus linguistics, and simultaneously to acquire tangible and transferable skills. The proposed projects during the hackathon harness an internal database containing different versions of the corpus and annotations.