Electro-Mechanical Safety Testing of Portable ECG Devices for Home Healthcare Usage / 대한의료정보학회지

OBJECTIVES: This paper suggests the experimental guidelines to evaluate the electro-mechanical safety of belt type equipment. The electro-mechanical safety was determined by using the International Electrotechnical Commission guidelines, which are widely used as important factors for assessing the electro-mechanical safety of belt type equipment. However, the local guidelines on wearable healthcare sensors are currently not well-established. Therefore, safety guidelines suited for the actual circumstances in Korea are required, and this paper attempts to try a new experimental safety test procedure of the wearable healthcare sensor. METHODS: This belt type device measures the electrocardiogram (ECG) and heart rates by attaching to the chest. Examination lists were selected by analyzing the common standards ofelectro-mechanical safety (IEC 60601-1) and environment tests (IEC 60068-1, IEC 60068-2) of home-healthcare equipment. RESULTS: The essential electrical safety, which was required for the RS300G3 as a medical device, was evaluated, and most of the examination lists were selected by considering the circumstances of the users. The device passed all the selected examinable lists that are applicable to the Korean environment. CONCLUSIONS: This study has limitations to estimate and to conduct electro-mechanical safety experiments because our study focused on the belt type of heart-rates equipment. We are not taking into account the overall electro-mechanical home-healthcare measurements. According to industrial and technological development, there are infinite possibilities for the advancement of home-healthcare equipment, so more examination lists for safety are being added in addition to what we have done.

Non-linear Analysis of Single Electroencephalography (EEG) for Sleep-Related Healthcare Applications / 대한의료정보학회지

OBJECTIVES: Soft-computing techniques are commonly used to detect medical phenomena and to help with clinical diagnoses and treatment. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the single electroencephalography (EEG) signal with the chaotic methods in order to identify the sleep stages. METHODS: Data acquisition (polysomnography) was performed on four healthy young adults (all males with a mean age of 27.5 years). The evaluated algorithm was designed with a correlation dimension and Lyapunov's exponent using a single EEG signal that detects differences in chaotic characteristics. RESULTS: The change of the correlation dimension and the largest Lyapunov exponent over the whole night sleep EEG was performed. The results show that the correlation dimension and largest Lyapunov exponent decreased from light sleep to deep sleep and they increased during the rapid eye movement stage. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that chaotic analysis may be a useful adjunct to linear (spectral) analysis for identifying sleep stages. The single EEG based nonlinear analysis is suitable for u-healthcare applications for monitoring sleep.

Encephalopathy Induced by Ammonia Inhalation: Case Reports

Ammonia is a colorless alkaline gas with a sharp pungent odor. It is widely used in industry and there are several case reports on deleterious pulmonary damage. Ammonia is also highly neurotoxic that interferes energy met abolism in the brain even with a small amount and causes encephalopathy in patients with severe liver disease. We experienced two patients with toxic encephalopathy and followed-up for 18 months. We assumed that ammonia was supposed to play a major role in the dysfunction of their brains. In our cases, the possible mechanisms of brain damage are as followings: (1) ammonia has direct toxic effect on brain by altering the energy metabolism, (2) inhalation of ammonia results in severe pulmonary damage and it may aggravate brain injury, and (3)besides ammonia itself, relatively hypoxic environment that they were exposed can take part in the brain injury.

Actinomycosis on left submandibular area: a case report / 영남의대학술지

Actinomycosis is a chronic suppurative and granulomatous bacterial infection characterized by contiguous spread, abscess formation and sinus tract formation. There are four clinical forms according to the lesional site, as 1) cervicofacial, 2) thoracic, 3) abdominal, and 4) disseminated form. Recently, we experienced a case of 54 year-old patient with left mandibular actinomycosis. The pathognomonic findings of actinomycosis is sulfur granule with multiple filaments in Gram-stain and the treatment of actinomycosis is surgical excision of mass or sinus tract with massive antibiotics (esp. Penicillin) therapy for 6 to 12 months.