No abstract available.
Embryo Transfer* ; Embryonic Structures* ; Fertilization in Vitro*

Most insects including the honeybee cause erythema and edema at the site of a sting in non-allergic individuals. This reaction usually resolves within a few days. However, in certain cases, the persistence of inciting materials in the cutaneous tissue may promote a local inflammatory foreign body reaction. Localized nodular lesions were seen in our two patients and erythemstous patches were present in one patient due to rarely encountered complications induced by retained sting materials. In these cases histopathology showed multiple foci of foreign body granuloma containing yellow refraetile material in the center surrounded by histiocytes and foreign body giant cells. The granulomatous skin lesions in these patients were treated with intralesional injections of triamcinolone acetonide and partial excisions of the nodular masses were performed.
Bites and Stings ; Edema ; Erythema ; Foreign-Body Reaction ; Giant Cells, Foreign-Body ; Granuloma* ; Granuloma, Foreign-Body ; Histiocytes ; Humans ; Injections, Intralesional ; Insects ; Skin ; Triamcinolone Acetonide

No abstract available.
Cyclosporine* ; Pityriasis Rubra Pilaris* ; Pityriasis*

The majority of nasal fractures have been managed by using closed reduction, intranasal packing and external splinting. However, in comminuted nasal bone fractures, the conventional closed reduction may be inadequate to reduce the fracture segments accurately, and insufficient to prevent secondary nasal deformity. In these cases, open reduction and interfragment wire fixation was recommended for accurate reduction, and has been mainstay of treatment modality. Furthermore, in nasoethmoid orbital fractures, anatomic reduction of fractured nasal bone, medial and inferior orbital rim segments to reconstruct nasofrontal buttress and transnasal wiring to prevent telecanthus were essential. But, the interfragment wire fixation is difficult and time-consuming procedure. The care must be taken to fix small fracture segments. It is also difficult to obtain bony support due to extensive dissection of periosteum, and to achieve rigid fixation on three- dimensional space, causing depression of bony contour. From April 1998 to August 1999, we used malleable mesh microplates for treatment of 3 comminuted nasal bone fractures and 3 nasoethmoid orbital fractures. During the follow up period of 8 months to 24 months, all of six patients had successful cosmetic result without complications. There was no recurrent depression of bony contour, no secondary nasal deformity, no displacement of microplates and no palpable, externally shown hardwares. The use of mesh microplates is reliable and useful method for the treatment of comminuted nasal fractures because it is relatively simple procedure and achieves rigid fixation on three-dimensional space without postoperative temporary nasal packing which may cause patient's discomfort. Furthermore, in nasoethmoid orbital fractures, correction of telecanthus can be done without application of transnasal wiring.
Congenital Abnormalities ; Depression ; Follow-Up Studies ; Humans ; Nasal Bone* ; Orbit ; Orbital Fractures ; Periosteum ; Splints

We have noticed an inadvertent error in our article. In Figure 1, an abbreviation is misspelled.

Depigmented halos surrounding cutaneous lesions have been the common description of many diseases, including benign melanocytic nevus, acquired blue nevi, malignant melanoma and neurofibromatosis. To the best of our knowledge, a halo around seborrheic keratosis has not been reported in the Korean dermatologic literature, and only two cases have been described abroad. Though vitiligo is known to be frequently associated with this halo phenomenon, the exact etiopathogenesis of vitiligo and the halo phenomenon is still unknown. Herein, we report on a case of halo seborrheic keratosis in a patient with vitiligo.
Humans ; Keratosis, Seborrheic ; Melanoma ; Neurofibromatoses ; Nevus, Blue ; Nevus, Pigmented ; Vitiligo

Cryptosporidium parvum is a well-known waterborne and opportunistic intracellular protozoan parasite that causes diarrheal illness. In this study, we quantitatively investigated reduction of the infectivity of C. parvum after gamma irradiation and repair of the infectivity during incubation time after irradiation. C. parvum oocysts were subjected to gamma irradiation at various doses (1, 5, 10, and 25 kGy), and the in vitro infectivity was measured by real-time PCR every day up to 7 days after irradiation. The in vitro infectivity of C. parvum on human ileocecal adenocarcinoma cells (HCT-8) was effectively reduced (> 2 log(10)) by irradiation at 10 kGy or more. However, in the experiment to find out repair of the infectivity, recovery was not noted until day 7 post-incubation.
Animals ; Cell Line, Tumor ; Cell Survival/radiation effects ; Cryptosporidiosis/*parasitology ; Cryptosporidium parvum/genetics/*pathogenicity/*radiation effects ; Female ; *Gamma Rays ; Humans ; Mice ; Mice, Inbred C57BL ; Oocysts/radiation effects ; Virulence

No abstract available.
Angina, Unstable*

In the rat lumbar spinal cord, the pathways and distribution of corticospinal tract (CST) axons were investigated using retrograde transport of Fast Blue(FB) and Fluoro-Gold(FG). The purpose of this study was, therefore, to fond the extent of CST projections in the lateral funiculus in the rat. Total of twelve female rats were used in this study. The laminectomy was performed at the 78 cord level to expose the spinal cord. Using a radiofrequency lesioning device, the CST, including the dorsal columns, were lesioned bilaterally. Three to seven days after lesioning, two laminectomies were performed at C6-8 and L3-5 to expose the spinal cord for dye injections. Retrograde tracing of fast blue(FB) and fluoro-gold(FG) were used to quantitate the number of cerebral cortex neurons projecting to the lumbar cord through tracts other than the CST in the dorsal column. New findings of the this study are : (1) a small number of CST axons projected to lumbosacral spinal cord bilaterally in the dorsolateral funiculi. (2) some axons projecting to the lumbar cord through the dorsolateral funiculi are collateral of neuron that project to the cervical spinal cord. Our results suggest that there are a larger number of CSTs than previously thought projecting to the lumbar spinal cord through the lateral funiculi. These residual tracts may play a role in the functional recovery of the affected limbs.
Animals ; Axons ; Cerebral Cortex ; Extremities ; Female ; Humans ; Laminectomy ; Neurons ; Pyramidal Tracts* ; Rats* ; Spinal Cord*

OBJECTIVES: The Korean government has enacted two laws, namely, the Personal Information Protection Act and the Bioethics and Safety Act to prevent the unauthorized use of medical information. To protect patients' privacy by complying with governmental regulations and improve the convenience of research, Asan Medical Center has been developing a de-identification system for biomedical research. METHODS: We reviewed Korean regulations to define the scope of the de-identification methods and well-known previous biomedical research platforms to extract the functionalities of the systems. Based on these review results, we implemented necessary programs based on the Asan Medical Center Information System framework which was built using the Microsoft. NET Framework and C#. RESULTS: The developed de-identification system comprises three main components: a de-identification tool, a search tool, and a chart review tool. The de-identification tool can substitute a randomly assigned research ID for a hospital patient ID, remove the identifiers in the structured format, and mask them in the unstructured format, i.e., texts. This tool achieved 98.14% precision and 97.39% recall for 6,520 clinical notes. The search tool can find the number of patients which satisfies given search criteria. The chart review tool can provide de-identified patient's clinical data for review purposes. CONCLUSIONS: We found that a clinical data warehouse was essential for successful implementation of the de-identification system, and this system should be tightly linked to an electronic Institutional Review Board system for easy operation of honest brokers. Additionally, we found that a secure cloud environment could be adopted to protect patients' privacy more thoroughly.
Access to Information ; Bioethics ; Computer Security ; Electronics ; Electrons ; Ethics Committees, Research ; Ethics, Research ; Humans ; Information Systems ; Jurisprudence ; Masks ; Privacy ; Research Design ; Social Control, Formal ; Tertiary Care Centers