We analyzed preoperative clinical characteristics, incidence of amblyopia, surgical results according to the type, resolution of preoperative symptoms and postoperative complications in 62 patients with intermittent exotropia, who were more than 15 years of age. The most frequent preoperative annoying symptom was eye strain from fatigue(40%), and the next one was cosmesis(23%). But, diplopia(14%) was relatively infrequent presenting complaint. Among 62 patients, 45 (72%) patients had equal vision, and 11 patients (18%) had amblyopia with two line difference between two eyes. The overall surgical success rate were seventy-seven percent. The 3 patients with postoperative esodeviation more than 5 prism diopters(PD) showed persistent uncrossed diplopia. The 4 patients with undercorrection more than 15 PD did not improve symptomatically. All patients with` postoperative exodeviation less than 15 PD had improvement or resolution of the symptoms. Our results suggest that overcorrection often resulted in unexpected diplopia in adults with intermittent exotropia. Therefore, it may be desirable to make undercorrection within 15 PD or orthotropic state in the patients more than 15 years of age.
Adult ; Amblyopia ; Diplopia ; Esotropia ; Exotropia* ; Humans ; Incidence ; Postoperative Complications

To evaluate the efficacy and safety of Excimer Laser Photorefractive Keratectomy (PRK) on the correction of high myopia, we performed planned double-pass PRK procedure at the same session on 62 eyes of 55 patients with myopia ranging from -6.30D to -15.25D (mean, -9.94D). In the first pass, a myopic correction of -6.00D with a 4.5 millimeter ablation zone was performed, and immediately after, a second correction of remaining myopia with a 5.0 millimeter ablation zone was performed. Attempted correction ranged from -6.30D to -9.50D (mean, -8.70D). The eyes were divided into two groups which were -10.50D or less (group A), and higher than -10.50D (group B). All the eyes received topical corticosteroid therapy postoperatively. One year after double-pass PRK, uncorrected visual acuity in group A and B improved to 20/40 or better in 84.0%, and 73.3% of the eyes and to 20/30 or better in 75.0% and 33.3% of the eyes respectively. The mean refractive errors at 12 months after PRK were -0.3 +/- 1.6D in group A, and -1.5 +/- 2.1D in group B. The percent of achieved correction within +/- 1.0D were 70.8% in group A, and 46.7% in group B 12 months after surgery. The epithelium healed by three days and there were no corneal erosions. Corneal haze (Grade 2 or more) was seen in 9.0% in group A and 36.4% in group B at 12 months after PRK. A planned double-pass PRK is a promising approach to correct high myopia (up to -10.50D), but long-term follow up will be required.
Adult ; Cornea/*surgery ; Female ; Humans ; Lasers, Excimer ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Myopia/*surgery ; Photorefractive Keratectomy/*methods ; Postoperative Complications ; Refraction, Ocular ; Visual Acuity ; Wound Healing

After pelvic trauma, complications of urethral stricture and organic impotence may develop. Certain cases of these are combined with penile curvature, which treatment method of artificial erection alone is not suitable, because severe penile pain may occur during erection, Therefore proper surgical methods should be added for straightening the penile curvature. After pelvic trauma, complete urethral stricture and organic impotence with penile curvature developed in 3 patients who complained severe pain due to curvature during the intracavernosal injection test. To all, treatment of choice for complete urethral sticture was visual internal urethrotomy for prevention of further development of curvature, and for curvature, Nesbit's penile straightening operations were performed, one by one. All patients could well urinate and enjoy their sexual intercourse after intracavernosal injection of PGE1 or papaverine. We recommend visual internal urethrotomy and the Nesbit's operation as effective methods to treat the case of penile curvature combined with complete urethral stricture after pelvic trauma.
Alprostadil ; Coitus ; Erectile Dysfunction* ; Humans ; Male ; Papaverine ; Urethral Stricture*

Massive thoracoabdominal aortic thrombosis is a rare finding in patients with iatrogenic Cushing syndrome in the absence of any coagulation abnormality. It frequently represents an urgent surgical situation. We report the case of an 82-year-old woman with massive aortic thrombosis secondary to iatrogenic Cushing syndrome. A follow-up computed tomography scan showed a decreased amount of thrombus in the aorta after anticoagulation therapy alone.
Aged, 80 and over ; Anticoagulants/therapeutic use ; Aorta, Abdominal/ultrasonography ; Cushing Syndrome/*complications/*diagnosis ; Electrocardiography ; Female ; Humans ; Iatrogenic Disease ; Thrombosis/*diagnosis/drug therapy/*etiology ; Tomography, X-Ray Computed ; Treatment Outcome

PUPOSE: The use of laparoscopic surgery for gastric disease has been gaining popularity. However, there has been the controversy over the indications and the standard techniques of laparoscopic gastric surgery in the early gastric cancer (EGC). The purposes of this study were to compare the clinical outcomes among a hand-assisted laparoscopic distal gastrectomy (HALDG), a laparoscopy-assisted distal gastrectomy (LADG), and an open distal gastrectomy (ODG) and to discuss the role of these procedures in the treatment of EGC. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Between August 2001 and July 2004, laparoscopic surgery was performed in our institution on 25 patients, LADG (n=7) and HALDG (n=18) with EGC. Analysis was performed on clinical data such as the operative time, the hospital stay, the start of oral intake, and the number of harvested lymph nodes. Patients were categorized into early and late groups by using the date of surgery and were also grouped by surgical procedure. To evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of laparoscopic surgery for EGC, we compared the clinical data with those for ODGs performed during the same period. RESULTS: There was no difference in the number of harvested lymph nodes between the laparoscopic group and the open group, but the operation time in the laparoscopic group was longer than that in the open group (P<0.05). Also, no significant differences in other clinical data were found between the two groups. Comparing the early and the late periods of the series, the number of harvested lymph nodes for a HALDS increased from 22.31 4.29 to 29.40 3.21 (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: Our early experience with laparoscopic gastric surgery shows that a wide range of possibilities exist for applying laparoscopic gastric surgery to selected gastric cancer patients. However, the surgical procedure should be standardized, and the outcomes of laparoscopic surgery, in comparison to those of open surgery, need to be confirmed based on a large randomized study.
Gastrectomy ; Humans ; Laparoscopy ; Length of Stay ; Lymph Nodes ; Operative Time ; Stomach Diseases ; Stomach Neoplasms*

We report a case of a 46-year-old male patient who presented with sudden abdominal pain and hypovolemic shock. The initial hemoglobin level was 11.9 g/dl, which fell to 6.9 g/dl after hydration. The emergent CT showed a large amount of hemoperitoneum and dye leakage. Emergent angiography and gell foam embolization were performed under the diagnosis of right gastric artery aneurysm rupture.
Abdominal Pain ; Aneurysm* ; Angiography ; Arteries* ; Diagnosis ; Hemoperitoneum* ; Humans ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Rupture ; Rupture, Spontaneous* ; Shock

Purpose: Hypoxaemia is a significant adverse event during endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) under monitored anaesthesia care (MAC); however, no model has been developed to predict hypoxaemia. We aimed to develop and compare logistic regression (LR) and machine learning (ML) models to predict hypoxaemia during ERCP under MAC. Materials and Methods: We collected patient data from our institutional ERCP database. The study population was randomly divided into training and test sets (7:3). Models were fit to training data and evaluated on unseen test data. The training set was further split into k-fold (k=5) for tuning hyperparameters, such as feature selection and early stopping. Models were trained over k loops; the i-th fold was set aside as a validation set in the i-th loop. Model performance was measured using area under the curve (AUC). Results: We identified 6114 cases of ERCP under MAC, with a total hypoxaemia rate of 5.9%. The LR model was established by combining eight variables and had a test AUC of 0.693. The ML and LR models were evaluated on 30 independent data splits. The average test AUC for LR was 0.7230, which improved to 0.7336 by adding eight more variables with an l 1 regularisation-based selection technique and ensembling the LRs and gradient boosting algorithm (GBM). The high-risk group was discriminated using the GBM ensemble model, with a sensitivity and specificity of 63.6% and 72.2%, respectively. Conclusion We established GBM ensemble model and LR model for risk prediction, which demonstrated good potential for preventing hypoxaemia during ERCP under MAC.

PURPOSE: Considering that nutritional state correlates to immunity, we performed this study to evaluate the correlation by assessing the numerical changes of the levels of serum albumin and lymphocyte subsets. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was performed on patients who were diagnosed as having gastric cancer and who underwent curative surgery from August 1998 to August 2004 in the Gyeongsang National University Hospital and whose peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets were tested prior to surgery. The study population was a total of 150 cases. RESULTS: The change in the lymphocyte subsets in relation to the change in the level of serum albumin in all patients with gastric cancer was determined, and was compared to disease stages. When patients were classified by using the level of serum albumin with 3.2 mg/dl as the cut-off point (low group: serum albumin <3.2 mg/dl, normal group = serum albumin >or=3.2 mg/dl), the number of peripheral blood lymphocytes, CD3+ cells, CD4+ cells, CD8+ cells, and CD16+56 cells were, significantly lower in the group with the level of serum albumin below 3.2 mg/dl (low group) than it was in the group with a serum albumin level above 3.2 mg/dl (normal group) (P<0.05). In stage I (n=59), CD16+56 cells were significantly lower in the low group. In stage II (n=29), the number of CD16+56 cells was lower and the ratio of CD4+/CD8+ was higher in the low group than in the normal group significantly. In stage IV (n=33), except for CD19+ cells, the number of all lymphocyte subsets was significantly lower and the ratio of CD4+/CD8+ was significantly higher in the low group. CONCLUSION: The group with a low level of serum albumin had a low absolute number of lymphocyte subsets. Based on this, we reconfirmed that the nutritional state is closely related with the immune state in patients with gastric cancer.
Humans ; Lymphocyte Subsets* ; Lymphocytes* ; Serum Albumin* ; Stomach Neoplasms*

PURPOSE: Considering that nutritional state correlates to immunity, we performed this study to evaluate the correlation by assessing the numerical changes of the levels of serum albumin and lymphocyte subsets. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was performed on patients who were diagnosed as having gastric cancer and who underwent curative surgery from August 1998 to August 2004 in the Gyeongsang National University Hospital and whose peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets were tested prior to surgery. The study population was a total of 150 cases. RESULTS: The change in the lymphocyte subsets in relation to the change in the level of serum albumin in all patients with gastric cancer was determined, and was compared to disease stages. When patients were classified by using the level of serum albumin with 3.2 mg/dl as the cut-off point (low group: serum albumin <3.2 mg/dl, normal group = serum albumin >or=3.2 mg/dl), the number of peripheral blood lymphocytes, CD3+ cells, CD4+ cells, CD8+ cells, and CD16+56 cells were, significantly lower in the group with the level of serum albumin below 3.2 mg/dl (low group) than it was in the group with a serum albumin level above 3.2 mg/dl (normal group) (P<0.05). In stage I (n=59), CD16+56 cells were significantly lower in the low group. In stage II (n=29), the number of CD16+56 cells was lower and the ratio of CD4+/CD8+ was higher in the low group than in the normal group significantly. In stage IV (n=33), except for CD19+ cells, the number of all lymphocyte subsets was significantly lower and the ratio of CD4+/CD8+ was significantly higher in the low group. CONCLUSION: The group with a low level of serum albumin had a low absolute number of lymphocyte subsets. Based on this, we reconfirmed that the nutritional state is closely related with the immune state in patients with gastric cancer.
Humans ; Lymphocyte Subsets* ; Lymphocytes* ; Serum Albumin* ; Stomach Neoplasms*

Transplant renal artery stenosis (TRAS) is an important cause of hypertension, allograft dysfunction, and graft loss. Patient and allograft survival rates are lower in patients with TRAS. Causes of TRAS include acute rejection, cytomegalovirus infection, calcineurin inhibitor toxicity, atherosclerosis of recipient, and/or donor. Technical problems due to surgery are a common cause of early TRAS. A 62-year-old male in end stage renal disease received kidney transplant surgery. There was 5/6 mismatch of human leukocyte antigen and the panel reactive antibody of patient was class I 0% and class II 0%. End to side anastomosis was done between the graft's renal artery and the patient's common iliac artery. His serum creatinine was measured at 6.4 mg/dL before transplantation but his serum creatinine level did not fall below 2.6 mg/dL at 5 days postoperative. His blood pressures was 160/90~180/100 mmHg. There was a significant TRAS (about 80% luminal narrowing) at the arterial anastomosis site on the renal magnetic resonance angiography. We performed percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) for the stenotic lesion. The balloon angioplasty was done with a 5 mm balloon and low pressure (8 mmHg, nominal pressure was 10 mmHg) at the stenotic lesion. The arterial pressure gradient was 8 mmHg (recipient's common iliac arterial pressure, 147/73 mmHg; poststenotic segmental renal arterial pressure, 139/70 mmHg) just before the balloon angioplasty. After PTA, the arterial pressure gradient became 3 mmHg (recipient's common iliac arterial pressure, 157/66 mmHg; poststenotic segmental renal arterial pressure, 154/65 mmHg). The arterial size and blood flow recovered to within normal range and serum creatinine level was normal after PTA. PTA using low pressure and a small balloon was safe and effective modality in treating early TRAS.
Allografts ; Angioplasty ; Angioplasty, Balloon* ; Arterial Pressure ; Atherosclerosis ; Calcineurin ; Creatinine ; Cytomegalovirus Infections ; Humans ; Hypertension ; Iliac Artery ; Kidney ; Kidney Failure, Chronic ; Kidney Transplantation ; Leukocytes ; Magnetic Resonance Angiography ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Phenobarbital ; Reference Values ; Renal Artery Obstruction* ; Renal Artery* ; Survival Rate ; Tissue Donors ; Transplants