Injuries and pains of musculoskeletal joint in human body is common onset in industrialized world. However, muscle fatigue plays a very significant role in contributing causes of many pains associated with musculoskeletal joints. Based on this hypothesis, degree of muscle fatigue was investigated using electromyography measurement technique during isometric and concentric/eccentric muscle contractions. Different response of the muscle fatigue between two different muscle contractions (isometric and concentric/eccentric contractions) was examined by comparison of parameters which were median frequency, median power and RMS value. Healthy 16 young persons without previous musculoskeletal diesease history were tested with Noraxon Myosystem 2000 EMG measurement system. In this study, two different exercises were performed. First exercise was concentric/eccentric exercise. Second exercise was isometric muscle contraction. In the case of the isometric exercise, median frequency was decreased, but median power and RMS were increased. However, during the concentric/eccentric exercse, median frequency was increased, but median power and RMS were decreased. Both of those revealed that the pattern of the median frequency was W type, but median power and RMS were M type as time passed. In this study, the patterns of the muscle fatigue during concentric/eccentric exercise as well as isometric exercise were identified. It will be helpful to prevent musculoskeletal injury from over-working andexercising.
Electromyography* ; Exercise ; Human Body ; Humans ; Joints ; Muscle Contraction ; Muscle Fatigue*

OBJECTIVES: Considerable variations in the contents of clinical practice are the natural consequences of the fact that so many factors can have influences on each clinical decision making processes in the psychiatric treatment, let alone the pharmacotherapy of schizophrenia. To attain the goal of rational treatment, it is needed to examine the actual contents of clinical practices and the degree of variations among diverse hospitals. In addition, it is also needed to look into the unique situations in which each hospital is situated. For this purpose, this study tried to investigate the degree of variations in several aspects of the treatment of schizophrenia with atypical antipsychotics currently practiced in Korea. METHODS: This study is based on the data from RODOS (Risperidone Olanzapine Drug Outcome Study) in Korea. This study had been designed as a multi-center naturalistic study, therefore, had many advantages for the survey study of actual clinical practices. The subjects of the study were the in-patients who had been given risperidone or olanzapine for the control of their psychotic symptoms. Clinical data had been gathered by retrospective chart review. The degree and the characteristics of the variations were examined by comparing the patient-characteristic variables and the treatment-related variables among each hospital. RESULTS: The differences in the baseline characteristics of the patients including the duration of illness and the past history of psychiatric treatment were substantial among each hospital, and these differences seemed to explain a great portion of the variations in the contents of treatment. The variations in the dosage of risperidone and olanzapine were not conspicuous among each hospital. However, the variations in other treatment-related variables, including duration of admission, proportion of combined therapy with other antipsychotics, usage of anticholinergics, detection rate of extrapyramidal symptoms, remained statistically significant after adjusting the baseline patient characteristics as covariates. Although no significant correlation among each variable was found, a couple of unique practice patterns common to several hospitals could be observed. CONCLUSIONS: Considerable variations in the diverse treatment-related variables were observed in the treatment of schizophrenic patients with risperidone and olanzapine. It seemed that the major portion of these variations could be explained by the characteristic of patient group. However, the possibility remained that the other factors including the socio-cultural environment of the community and the disposition of the clinician themselves were still the major contributing factors to these variations. It is expected that the future clinical practice surveys like this study can help the clinicians to reevaluate their current practices, and can help to accumulate the basic data needed to establish the more rational and customized treatment practices.
Antipsychotic Agents ; Cholinergic Antagonists ; Decision Making ; Drug Therapy ; Humans ; Korea ; Linear Energy Transfer ; Retrospective Studies ; Risperidone* ; Schizophrenia

It had heen emphasized the necessity for upper gastrointestinal endoscopic examinations in patients. Who has had gastrectomy and presents persisting gastrointestinal symptoms. This study was conducted to evaluate endoscopic findings and clinical symptoms in patients following gastrectomy. (continue...)
Gastrectomy* ; Humans

OBJECTIVES: Auditory verbal hallucination (AVH) is knoun for its high prevalence and difficulty in evaluation. Authors hypothesized that it may be possible to find useful dimensions of AVH that reflect the clinical status of schizophrenic patients by assessing the multi-dimensional changes and linguistic forms' of AVH during antipsychotic treatment. METHODS: 33 schizophrenic patients with AVH were selected and periodically assessed with the 11 items of hallucinations subscale of 'The Psychotic Symptom Rating Scales (PSYRATS)'. In addition, to assess the linguistic forms observed in the AVH, the evaluations of sentence structure of AVH reported by the patients were conducted. RESULTS: PSYRATS showed the multidimensionality inherent in AVH. The changes in the quantitative dimensions did not correlate well with patients' subjective distress. However, qualitative changes in the cognitive and emotional dimensions showed more favorable correlation with clinical course of the patient. The sentence structures of AVH showed tendency to change from "sentence" to "non-sentence" type with overall improvement during treatment. CONCLUSION: Multi-dimensional approach to AVH can give us more information about the changing patterns of multi-faceted structure of AVH and clinical status of patients than one-dimensional or categorical approach.
Hallucinations* ; Humans ; Linguistics ; Prevalence ; Weights and Measures

OBJECTIVES: Auditory verbal hallucination (AVH) is knoun for its high prevalence and difficulty in evaluation. Authors hypothesized that it may be possible to find useful dimensions of AVH that reflect the clinical status of schizophrenic patients by assessing the multi-dimensional changes and linguistic forms' of AVH during antipsychotic treatment. METHODS: 33 schizophrenic patients with AVH were selected and periodically assessed with the 11 items of hallucinations subscale of 'The Psychotic Symptom Rating Scales (PSYRATS)'. In addition, to assess the linguistic forms observed in the AVH, the evaluations of sentence structure of AVH reported by the patients were conducted. RESULTS: PSYRATS showed the multidimensionality inherent in AVH. The changes in the quantitative dimensions did not correlate well with patients' subjective distress. However, qualitative changes in the cognitive and emotional dimensions showed more favorable correlation with clinical course of the patient. The sentence structures of AVH showed tendency to change from "sentence" to "non-sentence" type with overall improvement during treatment. CONCLUSION: Multi-dimensional approach to AVH can give us more information about the changing patterns of multi-faceted structure of AVH and clinical status of patients than one-dimensional or categorical approach.
Hallucinations* ; Humans ; Linguistics ; Prevalence ; Weights and Measures

It is well known that the medullary carcinoma of the breast is one of the special types of breast carcinoma with a good prognosis. At present, the medullary carcinoma of the breast is subclassified into 3 types: typical medullary, atypical medullary and nonmedullary carcinoma. Among them, the former has the best prognosis. We reviewed the film mammographic and ultrasonomammographic findings of 13 patients according to the reevaluated histopathologic diagnosis. Typical medullary carcinoma shows a well circumscribed mass with surrounding halo on film mammogram, and well defined mass with central intermediate echogenicity and peripheral low echogenicity and posterior acoustic enhancement on ultrasonomammogram. Atypical medullary carcinoma shows relatively well circumscribed mass with partial marginal obliteration on film mammogram, and irregular bordered mass with inhomogeneous echogenicity due to focal necrosis in the mass and associated findings of thick boundary, asymetrical lateral shadowing on ultrasonomammogram. Nonmedullary carcinoma shows lobulated mass with surrounding parenchymal distortion and skin thickening on film mammogram, and relatively well defined lobulating mass with surrounding parenchymal distortion and marked heterogeneous internal echogenicity on ultrasonomammogram. Therefore, differentiation between typical medullary carcinoma with good prognosis and atypical medulary or nonmedullary carcinoma with poor prognosis, may be possible by various diagnostic imaging modalities preoperatively. But further collective study shall be needed in near future.
Acoustics ; Breast Neoplasms ; Breast* ; Carcinoma, Medullary* ; Classification* ; Diagnosis ; Diagnostic Imaging ; Humans ; Necrosis ; Prognosis ; Shadowing (Histology) ; Skin

No abstract available.
Paralysis* ; Tourniquets*

It is well-known that the infection of bone and joints could produce the shortening by destroying the articuiar cartilage and growth plate, or the lengthening hy increased hlood circulation to the epiphyseal and metaphyseal regions of long bone. Since 1985, we have treated total l7 cases of children s pyogenic or tuberculous children s knee with early arthrotomy and continuous irrigation etc. and followed their long hone growth for average 53 months after surgical intervention. Five patients (group I ) were early treated within 2 weeks and twelve patients(group 3 ) were delayed to treat their knees for more than 2 weeks of symptom development. Total 11 patients out of 17 cases(64.7%) (2 cases of group 1 pyogenic arthritis, and 1 case of group l and 8 cases of group II tuberculous arthritis) revealed growth acceleration. Femoral lengthening was much more greater than that of tibial growth, and the size of patella, distal femoral and proximal tibial epiphysis which were measured by computerized digitizer were also significantly larger than that of opposite knee. The total limb length was increased hy average 7mm in 6 months, l4mm in 1 year and 3mm in 2 years after operation. These results suggest the pyogenic and tuberculous arthritis in children s knee should he treated as early as possible after symptoms developed, and followed them to trace their limh inequality for at least 2 years after surgery. That means the early arthrotomy for tuberculous knee or even in pyogenic arthritis can preserve normal articular cartilage and can also prevent the early epiphyseal closure hy infection. and can get the limh lengthening by increased blood circulation around the knee joint.
Acceleration ; Arthritis ; Blood Circulation ; Cartilage ; Cartilage, Articular ; Child* ; Epiphyses ; Extremities ; Growth Plate ; Humans ; Joints ; Knee Joint* ; Knee* ; Lower Extremity* ; Patella ; Socioeconomic Factors

OBJECTIVE: Risperidone and Olanzapine, two representative atypical antipsychotics, both have so called 'atypicality' in common: however, some discrepancies are expected. Considering this, studies have been surprisingly rare that had directly compared the two drugs head-to-head. We compared the efficacy and tolerability of Risperidone and Olanzapine by retrospective chart review of the patients diagnosed as Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective disorder. This study was a part of international collaborative study, RODOS (Risperidone and Olanzapine Drug Outcomes study in Schizophrenia), and the total of 24 hospitals in Korea had participated in this study. RESULTS: Among the baseline characteristics, the duration of illness was longer in Olanzapine group. Also the proportion of first admitted patients, and that of first medicated patients were both lower in Olanzapine group. Though these baseline differences have been controlled as covariates, the proportion of responsive patients was higher, and the median value of the time to effect was shorter in Risperidone group. There was no significant difference in the rate of extrapyramidal symptoms. However, the drop-out rate due to intolerance and the rate of concomitant anticholinergic usage were significantly higher in Risperidone group compared to Olanzapine group. The rate of other somatic side effects showed no between-group difference, except weight gain which was significantly more prevalent and higher in Olanzapine group. CONCLUSION: Though Risperidone was found to be superior in efficacy, we could not draw a final conclusion since this study was a retrospective chart review without any randomization which has a severe inherent limitation. This study should not be taken as an attempt to prove one drug's superiority over the other: rather, an attempt to scrutinize each drugs' weak and strong points to provide a guideline for proper drug usage accordingly.
Antipsychotic Agents ; Humans ; Korea ; Psychotic Disorders* ; Random Allocation ; Retrospective Studies ; Risperidone* ; Schizophrenia* ; Weight Gain

Objectives: The early growth response 3 (EGR3) gene located in chromosome 8p21.3 is one of the susceptibility loci in many psychiatric disorders. EGR3 gene plays critical roles in signal transduction in the brain, which is involved in neuronal plasticity, neuronal development, learning, memory, and circadian rhythms. Recent studies have suggested EGR3 as a potential susceptibility gene for bipolar disorder (BPD). However, this requires further replication with an independent sample set. Methods: To investigate the genetic role of EGR3 in Korean patients, we genotyped six single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the chromosome region of EGR3 in 1076 Korean BPD patients and 773 healthy control subjects. Results: Among the six examined SNPs of EGR3 (rs17088531, rs1996147, rs3750192, rs35201266, rs7009708, rs1008949), SNP rs35201266, rs7009708, rs1008949 showed a significant association with BPD (p = 0.0041 for rs35201266 and BPD2, p = 0.0074 for rs1008949 and BPD, p = 0.0052 for rs1008949 and BPD1), which withstand multiple testing correction. In addition, the ‘G-C-C-C’ and ‘G-C-G-C’ haplotypes of EGR3 were overrepresented in the patients with BPD (p = 0.0055, < 0.0001, respectively) and the ‘G-T-G-C’ haplotype of EGR3 was underrepresented in patients with BPD (p = 0.0040). Conclusions In summary, our study supports the association of EGR3 with BPD in Korean population sample, and EGR3 could be suggested as a compelling susceptibility gene in BPD.