BACKGROUND: Because systolic and diastolic dysfunction frequently coexist in acute myocardial infarction(AMI), we hypothesize that a combined measure of ventricular performance using Doppler echocardiography may be more sensitive and time-saving diagnostic tool for the evaluation of patients presenting with cardiogenic chest pain. METHOD AND RESULTS: Seventy-one patients with AMI (47 male, 59+/-11 years) and 45 patients with normal coronary artery (29 male, 52+/-11 years) were included in the study for measurement of cardiac performance index and established parameters of ventricular function using conventional echo-Doppler methods. a new derived index of cardiac performance: (ICT+IRT)/ET, was obtained by subtracting ejection time(ET) from the interval between cessation and onset of the mitral inflow velocity to give the sum of isovolumic contraction time(ICT) and isovolumic relaxation time(IRT). The mean value of the index was significantly different between normal and AMI(p<0.01). The degree of inter-group overlap was smaller for the index compared to other parameters. within functional groups, the value of the index did not appear to be related to heart rate, mean arterial pressure and the degree of mitral regurgitation. CONCLUSION: cardiac performance index is a conceptually new, simple and reproducible Doppler index of combined systolic and diastolic myocardial performance, and it is useful as screening test for patients with cardiac dysfunction due to AMI.
Arterial Pressure ; Chest Pain ; Coronary Vessels ; Echocardiography, Doppler ; Heart Rate ; Humans ; Male ; Mass Screening* ; Mitral Valve Insufficiency ; Myocardial Infarction* ; Relaxation ; Ventricular Function

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to explore the life experiences of patients with a severe Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). METHODS: The data were collected through in-depth interviews of six patients suffering from severe COPD. The interviewed data were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim and checked for accuracy. The Giorgi method of phenomenology was used for analyzing data. RESULTS: Eight themes forming the, units of meaning, were: Repeated and Unpredictable Suffering of Dyspnea, Confidence Loss/Exhaustion Life due to non-efficient breathing, Gradually Deprived Liberty, Absolute Being to Sustaining my life, Source of Burden but Significant Person I am in the Family, Endless Tug-of-War-Capability/Endeavor to Breath, Longing for my Life, and Dead-end of breathing. CONCLUSION: The study results provide an in-depth understanding of life experiences of patients suffering from severe COPD. The findings will be useful to nurses caring for this population.
Dyspnea ; Freedom ; Humans ; Ice ; Life Change Events ; Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive ; Respiration ; Stress, Psychological

No abstract available.
Urinary Tract Infections* ; Urinary Tract*

Purpose: This study was conducted to assess public awareness and policy challenges faced by practicing nurses. Methods: After collecting nurse-related news articles published before and after ‘the Thanks to You Challenge’ campaign (between December 31, 2019, and July 15, 2020), keywords were extracted via preprocessing. A three-step method keyword analysis, latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling, and keyword network analysis was used to examine the text and the structure of the selected news articles. Results: Top 30 keywords with similar occurrences were collected before and after the campaign. The five dominant topics before the campaign were: pandemic, infection of medical staff, local transmission, medical resources, and return of overseas Koreans. After the campaign, the topics ‘infection of medical staff’ and ‘return of overseas Koreans’ disappeared, but ‘the Thanks to You Challenge’ emerged as a dominant topic. A keyword network analysis revealed that the word of nurse was linked with keywords like thanks and campaign, through the word of sacrifice. These words formed interrelated domains of ‘the Thanks to You Challenge’ topic. Conclusion The findings of this study can provide useful information for understanding various issues and social perspectives on COVID-19 nursing. The major themes of news reports lagged behind the real problems faced by nurses in COVID-19 crisis. While the press tends to focus on heroism and whole society, issues and policies mutually beneficial to public and nursing need to be further explored and enhanced by nurses.

Purpose: This study was conducted to assess public awareness and policy challenges faced by practicing nurses. Methods: After collecting nurse-related news articles published before and after ‘the Thanks to You Challenge’ campaign (between December 31, 2019, and July 15, 2020), keywords were extracted via preprocessing. A three-step method keyword analysis, latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling, and keyword network analysis was used to examine the text and the structure of the selected news articles. Results: Top 30 keywords with similar occurrences were collected before and after the campaign. The five dominant topics before the campaign were: pandemic, infection of medical staff, local transmission, medical resources, and return of overseas Koreans. After the campaign, the topics ‘infection of medical staff’ and ‘return of overseas Koreans’ disappeared, but ‘the Thanks to You Challenge’ emerged as a dominant topic. A keyword network analysis revealed that the word of nurse was linked with keywords like thanks and campaign, through the word of sacrifice. These words formed interrelated domains of ‘the Thanks to You Challenge’ topic. Conclusion The findings of this study can provide useful information for understanding various issues and social perspectives on COVID-19 nursing. The major themes of news reports lagged behind the real problems faced by nurses in COVID-19 crisis. While the press tends to focus on heroism and whole society, issues and policies mutually beneficial to public and nursing need to be further explored and enhanced by nurses.

Cervical cancer and its precursors are caused principally, if not exclusively, by HPV infection and HPV DNA is found in more than 90% of cervical cancers. Cervical cytology is limited by its false negativity and this may be supplimented by other adjunctive test such as HPV test. It is therefore important to explore the use of HPV DNA detection as a primary or supplementary screening method and to determine whether HPV typing can be used as a predictor of a lesion's clinical behavior. Cervical cytology and Hybrid Capture test for HPV detection were performed in 450 asymtomatic wornen visited Health Care Center in Kangnam St. Mary's Hospital,and none of whom was believed to have current cervical disease. The Papanicolaou cytology results were classified by The Bethesda System : 333(74.%) women were classified to within normal limit, 19(4.2%) benign reactive change, 38(8.4%) ASCUS, 59(13%) low grade SIL, and only one woman high grade SIL. Twenty five of 450(5.6%) women showed HPV infection by Hybid Capture test. Among 98 wornen with abnormal Papanicolaou cytology, 16(16.3%) women showed HPV DNA positivity. (continue)
Delivery of Health Care ; DNA* ; Female ; Humans* ; Mass Screening* ; Papilloma* ; Uterine Cervical Neoplasms

PURPOSE: This study was done to identify correlations between fatigue and quality of life in clinical nurses. METHOD: A sample of 294 nurses working in 3 general hospitals answered a questionnaire containing Yoshitake's fatigue scale and WHOQOL-BREF. Data were analyzed using t-test, ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficients. The SPSS/WIN 11.0 version program was used. RESULTS: The score for level of fatigue was 2.11 (52.7%) and quality of life, 2.89 (57.8%). The level of fatigue was highest in the physical domain followed by psychical and nervous-sensual domain in that order. There were statistically significant differences in scores of fatigue depending on the nurse's age, marital status, career, position, health status and present illness. Quality of life had the highest score in the social domain followed by physical, overall, psychological, and environmental domain in that order. There were statistically significant differences in scores on quality of life depending on nurse's age, marital status, career, position, health status and present illness. CONCLUSION: The relationship between fatigue and quality of life revealed a significant negative correlation. Based on this study, nursing administrators need to reduce the level of nurse fatigue by providing various programs, which improve quality of life.
Administrative Personnel ; Fatigue* ; Hospitals, General ; Humans ; Marital Status ; Nursing ; Quality of Life* ; Surveys and Questionnaires

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association of the muscle contraction with gating of the sensory input at central and peripheral levels according to the intensity of muscle contraction and location of the muscles, somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs) studies were evaluated at different levels of isometric contraction in the different muscles. METHOD: Median nerve SSEPs were recorded at Erb's point and scalp in the ten healthy adult subjects with isometric contraction of ipsilateral abductor pollicis brevis (APB), ipsilateral abductor digiti minimi (ADM) and contralateral APB. Median nerve SSEPs were recorded in each of these conditions during precontraction, weak contraction, strong contraction and 4 minutes after contraction. RESULTS: 1) N9 amplitudes of median SSEPs recorded at Erb's point were augumented during weak contraction and these amplitude augumentations were statistically significant in the ipsilateral APB contraction (p<0.05). 2) N20 amplitudes recorded at scalp were inhibited during strong isometric contraction and these amplitude inhibitions were statistically significant in the ipsilateral APB contraction (p<0.05). 3) The latencies of N9 and N20 potentials were not significantly changed during isometric contraction. CONCLUSION: Therefore peripheral nervous system as well as central nervous system is responsible for gating, so the subject should be asked for the best relaxation possible for higher reliability of SSEPs.
Adult ; Central Nervous System ; Evoked Potentials, Somatosensory* ; Humans ; Isometric Contraction ; Median Nerve ; Muscle Contraction* ; Muscles ; Peripheral Nervous System ; Relaxation ; Scalp

The blood supply can become disrupted in situations of increased demand during unexpected national catastrophes and when a patient needs a rare blood transfusion, which depends on the blood inventory in peacetime. Cryopreservation of blood, which can be stored up to 10 years, represents a possible solution to this problem by avoiding storage lesions. This review describes frozen red cell technologies, quality control issues related to post-thaw red blood cells, and preconditions and practical considerations for implementation of a frozen blood banking system in Korea.
Blood Banks ; Blood Transfusion ; Cryopreservation ; Erythrocytes ; Humans ; Korea ; Quality Control ; Strategic Stockpile*