The author experienced a case of autologous platelet-rich plasma (PRP) affecting the recovery of a chronic neuropathic diabetic foot ulcer combined with infection. A 65-year-aged male with uncontrolled diabetes presented with a Wagner grade 2 diabetic foot ulcer on his left forefoot of more than 2 weeks duration. Osteomyelitis, gangrene, and ischemia requiring acute intervention were absent. Although infection was controlled to a moderate degree, wound healing was unsatisfactory following surgical debridement and simple dressing. Therefore, intralesional autologous PRP injection was performed 5 times as an adjuvant regeneration therapy, and the recalcitrant ulcer healed in 3 months. Intralesional PRP injections are worthwhile as they promote wound regeneration, are evidence-based, safe, and can be easily performed in ambulatory care facilities.

Rigid ureteroscopy is new one of established technique for the management of ureteral stones. Manipulation of calculi can be done under direct vision using flexible forceps or stone baskets with increased safety and efficacy. We have used a 5Fr. electrohydraulic lithotripsy to disintegrate stones that were two large to b removed by manipulation. Between May 1988 and October 1989. 140 ureteroscopies were performed for removal of ureteral stones. In 119 cases(85 %) the stone was removed successfully. Electrohydraulic lithotripsy was used successfully to remove the stone in 25 among 28 cases(89.3%). We conclude that ureteroscopic removal of ureteral stone under direct vision is a safe and effective method for treatment of ureteral stone.
Calculi ; Lithotripsy* ; Surgical Instruments ; Ureter* ; Ureteral Calculi* ; Ureteroscopy

Objectives: In this study, we conducted an exploratory analysis of the current media trends on schizophrenia using text-mining methods. Methods: First, web-crawling techniques extracted text data from 575 news articles in10 major newspapers between 2018 and 2019, which were selected by searching “schizophrenia” in the Naver News. We had developed document-term matrix (DTM) and/or term-document matrix (TDM) through pre-processing techniques. Through the use of DTM and TDM, frequency analysis, cooccurrence network analysis, and topic model analysis were conducted. Results: Frequency analysis showed that keywords such as “police,” “mental illness,” “admission,” “patient,” “crime,” “apartment,” “lethal weapon,” “treatment,” “Jinju,” and “residents” were frequently mentioned in news articles on schizophrenia. Within the article text, many of these keywords were highly correlated with the term “schizophrenia” and were also interconnected with each other in the co-occurrence network. The latent Dirichlet allocation model presented 10 topics comprising a combination of keywords: “police-Jinju,” “hospital-admission,” “research-finding,” “care-center,” “schizophrenia-symptom,” “society-issue,” “family-mind,” “woman-school,” and “disabled-facilities.” Conclusion The results of the present study highlight that in recent years, the media has been reporting violence in patients with schizophrenia, thereby raising an important issue of hospitalization and community management of patients with schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Chronic simulated snoring was induced in rabbits to determine the impact of snoring on the development of atherosclerosis. METHODS: The pressure wave of induced snoring at the carotid bifurcation of rabbits was acquired by gently pressing the airway. This wave was then simulated using custom-made mechanical devices. Twelve rabbits were used in this study, seven of which were assigned to the experimental group and the remaining five formed the control group. All of the rabbits were raised on a 1% high-cholesterol diet. Either working or sham devices were positioned at the ventral center of the neck in each rabbit. At the end of a 2-month observation period, all of the rabbits were sacrificed by perfusion fixation, the carotid arteries harvested, and the carotid atherosclerosis histology reviewed. RESULTS: All of the rabbits survived to the end of the experimental period. Blood sampling revealed the presence of hypercholesterolemia in both groups, with no significant difference between them. The presence and degree of atherosclerosis did not differ significantly between the groups. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this study show the feasibility of making a chronic simulated snoring rabbit model. However, the causative role of snoring in carotid atherosclerosis was not detected in this animal study.
Animals ; Atherosclerosis ; Carotid Arteries ; Carotid Artery Diseases* ; Diet ; Hypercholesterolemia ; Neck ; Perfusion ; Rabbits* ; Snoring*

BACKGROUND: The rapid emergence of multi-drug resistant pneumococcal strains has heightened the importance of reliable and convenient susceptibility testing methods. The newly-developed VITEK-2 (bioMerieux, Inc., Hazelwood, MO, USA) System includes the capability of performing rapid susceptibility testing of Streptococcus pneumoniae using specially configured cards. The objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of the VITEK-2 System for susceptibility testing of S. pneumoniae. METHODS: One hundred clinical strains of S. pneumoniae (18 penicillin susceptible strains, 32 intermediate strains, and 50 resistant strains) were tested, which had been isolated in Samsung Medical Center. Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) for penicillin, cefotaxime, erythromycin, ofloxacin, chloramphenicol, tetracyclin, and vancomycin were determined by broth dilution method and VITEK-2 System using AST-P506 cards. The results obtained by VITEK-2 System were compared to those obtained by broth dilution method. RESULTS: Overall agreement of MICs determined by two methods was 93.0% within the range of one dilution. The best agreement was achieved with vancomycin (100%), and in descending order, 99% with ofloxacin, 97% with erythromycin, 94% with chloramphenicol, 89% with cefotaxime, 88% with tetracycline, and 85% with penicillin. There were 1.9% of very major error, 2.0% of major error, and 8.6% of minor error. The mean time for generation of susceptibility results was 9.6 hours. CONCLUSIONS: VITEK-2 System provided rapid and reliable determinations of susceptibility category for most antibiotics and would be helpful as a substitution of existing MIC methods.
Anti-Bacterial Agents ; Cefotaxime ; Chloramphenicol ; Erythromycin ; Microbial Sensitivity Tests ; Ofloxacin ; Penicillins ; Pneumonia ; Streptococcus pneumoniae* ; Streptococcus* ; Tetracycline ; Vancomycin

Twenty-one cases of seminoma (including testicular seminoma, ovarian dysgerminoma and extragonadal germinoma) were reviewed for the cell types responsible for the production of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG). Histologically the cases included seventeen classical seminomas and 4 anaplastic seminomas. The latter had some mononuclear and multinuclear giant cells. All 4 patients with anaplastic seminoma had elevated levels of serum AFP, and each of these cases contained AFP producing tumor cells identified by immunoperoxidase staining. All seminomas of patients with elevated serum levels of HCG were of the classical type but HCG producing tumor cells could not be identified by immunoperoxidase staining. Immunoreactivity to anti-AFP was found in some large mononuclear cells and anaplastic cells. To explain these results, we propose that the large mononuclear cell is a multipotential cell capable of differentiating into a germ cell, yolk sac and embryo, and that the anaplastic seminoma cells might represent a stage on the continuum of cellular differentiation from the large mononuclear cells to germ cells. The multinuclear giant cell does not appear to be essential for the production of either AFP or HCG in seminoma.
Adolescent ; Adult ; Child ; Chorionic Gonadotropin/metabolism ; Dysgerminoma/metabolism/*pathology ; Female ; Human ; Immunohistochemistry ; Male ; Middle Age ; Ovarian Neoplasms/metabolism/pathology ; Support, Non-U.S. Gov't ; Testicular Neoplasms/metabolism/pathology ; alpha-Fetoproteins/biosynthesis

PURPOSE: This study was designed to investigate the survey of analyzing nursing interventions and nursing outcomes of the patients with liver transplantation. METHOD: The subjects of this study consisted of 83 patients and fifteen nurses who took care of them. The methods of this study were retrospective and descriptive survey. RESULT: The mean age of patients was 42.7 years and the subjects were 62.7% males. 56.7% of these patients were diagnosed with liver cirrhosis of B type. The mean duration of hospitalization was 48.6 days. Ninety-five nursing interventions were performed at least daily. The most frequent used interventions were "environmental management: comfort", "medication administration: parenteral", "cough enhancement", and " oxygen therapy". Even though SGOT level to identify nursing outcomes was decreased, SGOT was not within normal limits. Therefore, even after discharge of patients, There is a need to take care of them carefully. CONCLUSION: Conclusion: These findings revealed the significance and need of nurse practitioners who performed professional nursing intervention for the patients with liver transplantation. Especially, it is necessary needs to develop the nursing intervention programs for comfort.
Aspartate Aminotransferases ; Hospitalization ; Humans ; Liver Cirrhosis ; Liver Transplantation* ; Liver* ; Male ; Nurse Practitioners ; Nursing* ; Oxygen ; Retrospective Studies

Thoracic disc herniation is uncommon disease and its diagnosis and treatment still remain difficult. We present a case of thoracic disc herniation at T7-8 vertebral level presenting with signs of spinal cord compression. The lesion was diagnosed by magnetic resonance image(MRI) and iopamidol-enhanced computed tomography(CT). The patient was operated by transthoracic transpleural approach using the surgical microscope. the operative result was excellent. A brief review of the literature is given.
Diagnosis ; Humans ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Spinal Cord Compression

PURPOSE: This study was done to provide information on issues of nursing core competencies needed in the fields of nursing practice for graduates in nursing, from the perspective of nursing managers, and to make suggestion for improving nursing education programs. METHODS: Ten nursing managers participated in this study. They were in charge of clinical nursing education in the fields of nursing practice. Data were collected using focus group interviews and analyzed with the content analysis methodology of Downe - Wamboldt's. RESULTS: Six types of nursing core competency - therapeutic nursing competency, professional nursing competency, administrative nursing competency, humanistic nursing competency, relational nursing competency, and personal nursing competency - were identified as nursing core competencies needed in the fields of nursing practice for graduates in nursing. CONCLUSION: Results of the study show important evidence for decision-making about nursing curriculum revision based on nursing core competency, both in the classroom and in nursing practice areas. These results should contribute to the development of evaluation indicators for nursing students or new nurses. Further research is required to measure degree of nursing core competency in graduates of nursing and to identify the effect of competency-based education for improving nursing core competency.
Competency-Based Education ; Curriculum ; Education, Nursing ; Fees and Charges ; Focus Groups ; Humans ; Professional Competence ; Students, Nursing

To evaluate the historical trend of anesthetic experience for the past 22 years a total of 68,473 cases which were performed at the National Medical Center from 1959 to 1981 were studied. To simplify the analysis statistically, the author selected the anesthetic cases every other year(12 years). 1) General anesthesia was performed in more than 78% of the total cases and of this number endotracheal intubation has been used with increasing frequency(average 92.8%). 2) For intravenous induction, thiopental sodium was used as the main agent, in more than 90% since 1980. 3) Trichlorethylene, cyclopropane and ethylchloride which had been used since 1961, were abandoned from 1978 except for training purposes. Methoxyflurane was used from 1973 to 1979, but given up there after because of it's nephrotoxicity. The use of halothane has steadily increased(86% of the total inhalation anesthetics) and ethrane has also been used with increasing frequency since 1980. 4) Pancuronium has been used as a primary muscle relaxant instead of gallamine and D-tubocurarine which had been used as the main durgs from 1959 till 1979. 5) Innovar and morphine as intravenous anesthetics, have recently been with increasing grequency.
Anesthesia, General ; Anesthetics, Intravenous ; Enflurane ; Gallamine Triethiodide ; Halothane ; Inhalation ; Intubation, Intratracheal ; Methoxyflurane ; Morphine ; Pancuronium ; Thiopental ; Tubocurarine