Total or mostly total intestinal aganglionosis is rare and invariably fatal. All patients with aganglionosis involving more than half of the small bowel have died with persistent intestinal obstruction and secondary malnutrition and infection. Recently, we experienced two cases of total colon aganglionosis extending to the middle of the jejunum in triplet. We report the cases with brief review of literatures.
Colon* ; Humans ; Intestinal Obstruction ; Jejunum ; Malnutrition ; Triplets*

No abstract available.
Bias (Epidemiology)* ; Case-Control Studies* ; Humans ; Triplets*

Intron prediction is an important problem of the constantly updated genome annotation. Using two model plant (rice and Arabidopsis) genomes, we compared two well-known intron prediction tools: the Blast-Like Alignment Tool (BLAT) and Sim4cc. The results showed that each of the tools had its own advantages and disadvantages. BLAT predicted more than 99% introns of whole genomic introns with a small number of false-positive introns. Sim4cc was successful at finding the correct introns with a false-negative rate of 1.02% to 4.85%, and it needed a longer run time than BLAT. Further, we evaluated the intron information of 10 complete plant genomes. As non-coding sequences, intron lengths are not limited by a triplet codon frame; so, intron lengths have three phases: a multiple of three bases (3n), a multiple of three bases plus one (3n + 1), and a multiple of three bases plus two (3n + 2). It was widely accepted that the percentages of the 3n, 3n + 1, and 3n + 2 introns were quite similar in genomes. Our studies showed that 80% (8/10) of species were similar in terms of the number of three phases. The percentages of 3n introns in Ostreococcus lucimarinus was excessive (47.7%), while in Ostreococcus tauri, it was deficient (29.1%). This discrepancy could have been the result of errors in intron prediction. It is suggested that a three-phase evaluation is a fast and effective method of detecting intron annotation problems.
Codon ; Genome ; Genome, Plant ; Humans ; Introns ; Plants ; Triplets

PURPOSE: Point-of-care tests (POCTs) have the potential to significantly influence management of neonates. The aim of this study was to assess the clinical usefulness of the POCT chemistry analyzer in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). METHODS: Blood samples of neonates admitted to the NICU were tested using a POCT chemistry analyzer (Piccolo Xpress Chemistry Analyzer, Abaxis, Union City, CA, USA) and a central laboratory chemical analyzer (Chemistry analyzer 7600-110, Hitachi Ltd., Tokyo, Japan) from March to September, 2010. Correlation of 15 analytes between the POCT and the central laboratory machine was evaluated. For consistency of the POCT, three consecutive samplings were performed. Differences among the three tests were recorded. The causes of performance errors were checked through log files. RESULTS: One hundred of 112 pairs of tests for accuracy performed in 54 neonates showed a high correlation between the two machines. Twelve performance errors occurred during the 112 tests. The most common error was insufficient sample error. Eighteen triplet tests performed in 18 patients for consistency revealed a difference range of 3-10%, which was considered to be acceptable. No error occurred during the 54 tests. CONCLUSION: The POCT is capable of analyzing multiple analytes with a minimal amount of whole blood in a short time. The few performance errors noted presently are likely preventable. This POCT is concluded to be suitable for use as a simple and rapid diagnostic method in the NICU with a minimal amount of blood collected in a less invasive manner.
Humans ; Infant, Newborn ; Intensive Care Units, Neonatal ; Intensive Care, Neonatal ; Point-of-Care Systems ; Tokyo ; Triplets

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is caused by CTG repeat expansion in the DMPK gene in chromosome 19q13.3. External ophthalmoplegia is a rare manifestation in DM1. We report a DM1 patient confirmed by the presence of 650 CTG triplet expansions in the DMPK gene and had limitation of adduction gaze bilaterally. Brain MRI showed bilateral medial rectus muscles atrophy. Our patient provides additional evidence of ocular motor muscle involvement in DM1.
Atrophy ; Brain ; Humans ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Muscles ; Myotonia ; Myotonic Dystrophy* ; Ophthalmoplegia ; Paralysis* ; Triplets

This paper presents a new class of local neighborhood based wavelet feature descriptor (LNWFD) for content based medical image retrieval (CBMIR). To retrieve images effectively from large medical databases is backbone of diagnosis. Existing wavelet transform based medical image retrieval methods suffer from high length feature vector with confined retrieval performance. Triplet half-band filter bank (THFB) enhanced the properties of wavelet filters using three kernels. The influence of THFB has employed in the proposed method. First, triplet half-band filter bank (THFB) is used for single level wavelet decomposition to obtain four sub-bands. Next, the relationship among wavelet coefficients is exploited at each sub-band using 3 × 3 neighborhood window to form LNWFD pattern. The novelty of the proposed descriptor lies in exploring relation between wavelet transform values of pixels rather than intensity values which gives more detail local information in wavelet sub-bands. Thus, proposed feature descriptor is robust against illumination. Manhattan distance is used to compute similarity between query feature vector and feature vector of database. The proposed method is tested for medical image retrieval using OASIS-MRI, NEMA-CT, and Emphysema-CT databases. The average retrieval precisions achieved are 71.45%, 99.51% of OASIS-MRI and NEMA-CT databases for top ten matches considered respectively and 55.51% of Emphysema-CT database for top 50 matches. The superiority in terms of performance of the proposed method is confirmed by the experimental results over the well-known existing descriptors.
Diagnosis ; Humans ; Lighting ; Methods ; Residence Characteristics ; Subject Headings ; Triplets ; Wavelet Analysis

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this paper is to describe the components of a next-generation electronic nursing records system ensuring full semantic interoperability and integrating evidence into the nursing records system. METHODS: A next-generation electronic nursing records system based on detailed clinical models and clinical practice guidelines was developed at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital in 2013. This system has two components, a terminology server and a nursing documentation system. RESULTS: The terminology server manages nursing narratives generated from entity-attribute-value triplets of detailed clinical models using a natural language generation system. The nursing documentation system provides nurses with a set of nursing narratives arranged around the recommendations extracted from clinical practice guidelines. CONCLUSIONS: An electronic nursing records system based on detailed clinical models and clinical practice guidelines was successfully implemented in a hospital in Korea. The next-generation electronic nursing records system can support nursing practice and nursing documentation, which in turn will improve data quality.
Data Accuracy ; Evidence-Based Practice ; Humans ; Korea ; Medical Records Systems, Computerized ; Nursing Records* ; Nursing* ; Semantics ; Seoul ; Triplets

Acardiac fetus in triplet pregnancy is a very rare, fatal congenital anomaly that had not been reported in Korea. It only occurs in multiple gestations associated with placental vascular anastomoses between the affected fetus and its co-twin. The major complications associated with acardiac fetus in triplet pregnancy are congestive heart failure in normal pumping fetus, maternal polyhydramnios, preterm labor, intrauterine fetal death, etc, and perinatal diagnosis can be made with the perinatal ultrasonographic examination. We report a case of acardiac fetus in a spontaneous triplet pregnancy at 23 weeks of gestational age with a brief review of the literature.
Diagnosis ; Female ; Fetal Death ; Fetus* ; Gestational Age ; Heart Failure ; Humans ; Korea ; Obstetric Labor, Premature ; Polyhydramnios ; Pregnancy ; Pregnancy, Triplet* ; Triplets*

PURPOSE: Cyclic vomiting syndrome is characterized by repeated, unpredictable, explosive and unexplained bouts of vomiting and recur after intervals of uncertain length. In the absence of either known etiology or pathogenesis, deciphering the mystery of cyclic vomiting syndrome presents us with a daunting clinical challenge. As we seek to understand this mysterious vomiting disorder of unknown etiology and pathogenic mechanism, we perfomed electrogastrography (EGG) and measured radionuclide gastric emptying time and compared the data with that of control. METHODS: Total 13 patients with cyclic vomiting (ages from 1 yr 6 m to 13 yr 3 m : mean 7 yr 2 m ) and 9 normal controls (ages from to 1 yr 8 m to 13 y 4 m, mean; 7 y 6 m) were enrolled in this study. Among them 16 children (9 patients and 7 controls) undertook gastric emptying time and 13 children (7 patients and 5 controls) undertook EGG. EGG : after midnight NPO, total 3 triplet of electrodes (two for the recoding of gastric electricity along the antral axis, and the other one for references) were used. After 1 hour recording of EGG we analysed the dominant frequencies. Gastric emptying: gastric emptying was evaluated by a radiolabeled (1mCi [99mTc] sulfur colloid incorporated into egg albumin) solid phase meal after an overnight fast of at least 8 hr. Radioisotope counts were obtained immediately after ingestion and continued for 10-min intervals for 120 min. The half emptying time (T1/2) and percent gastric residual at 2 hr were calculated. RESULTS: EGG: the dominant frequencies were significanlty different between case and control group (p=0.005, median values; 4.1 Hz and 3.1 Hz in case group and control group respectively ). Gastric emptying time: the gastic emptying rates at 120 min were 53.1+/-16% and 66.9+/-7.0% in patients and control groups respectively, which showed the gastric emptying was significantly delayed in patient groups (p=0.042) CONCLUSIONS: With the results of our study, we felt that the patients with cyclic vomiting has a some sort of motility disorders, like as a variant of chronic idiopathic intestinal pseudoobstruction or gastroparesis. But further sophisticated designed studies are needed to confirm this.
Axis, Cervical Vertebra ; Child ; Colloids ; Eating ; Electricity ; Electrodes ; Gastric Emptying* ; Gastroparesis ; Humans ; Intestinal Pseudo-Obstruction ; Meals ; Ovum ; Sulfur ; Triplets ; Vomiting*

Over the past 30 years, there has been an increase in the incidence of multifetal pregna-ncies, primarily because of the introduction of ovarian stimulants for ovulation induction and assisted reproductive technology ( ART ) in infertile patients. It is well established that multifetal pregnancies are associated with an increased frequency of the maternal complications and gre-ater perinatal morbidity and mortyality. The adverse outcome of multifetal pregnancies is dire-ctly proportional to the number of fetuses, primarily as an consequence of prterm delivery. Re-duction in the number of fetuses in multifetal pregnancies has been proposed as a way to impr-ove the perinatal outcome in this situation. Therefore, selective fetal reduction ( SFR ) is sugges-ted as a therapeutic option for continuation of pregnancy with fetuses mature enough to survi-ve. In this paper, we report our infertility clinic experiences with 6 patients who carried mult- ifetal pregnancies including 1 quintuplet, 1 quadruplet, and 4 triplets. from January, 1991 to May, 1996, transabdominal SFR was accomplished by fetal intrathoracic KCl injection at 9~10 weeks of gestation. After the prcedure, 4 patients remained as twin pregnancies, and 2 patients as single pregnancy. There have been 3 sets of twin deliveries and the 2 sets of single delivery. One case was aborted. Two patients were delivered after 37 weeks of gestation, 2 patients were at 35 weeks, and 1 patient at 24 weeks. All babies have been healthy after birth in patients after 35 weeks gestation. There was no fetal anomaly related to the procedure in the 6 cases. We concluded that transabdominal SFR is a rather safe and useful procedure that may improve the outcome of multifetal pregnancies.
Fetus ; Humans ; Incidence ; Infertility ; Ovulation Induction ; Parturition ; Pregnancy Reduction, Multifetal* ; Pregnancy* ; Pregnancy, Twin ; Quadruplets ; Quintuplets ; Reproductive Techniques, Assisted ; Triplets ; Twins