Cardiovascular Malformation Diagnosed by Echocardiography in Neonates of Diabetic Mothers / 대한주산의학회잡지

PURPOSE: This study was undertaken to investigate the spectrum and the prognosis of neonate with cardiovascular malformation delivered from diabetic mothers. METHODS: From January 2004 to December 2008, 70 neonates born to diabetic mothers who were delivered at Dongsan Medical Center, Keimyung University, and received echocardiographic study between 3rd and 14th days of life to identify the presence of cardiac anomaly were included. Cases combined with chromosomal anomaly were excluded. And follow up results (rate of cardiac operation and mortality) were assessed. RESULTS: Among 67 neonates, 22 cases (32.8%) had combined cardiovascular malformation. They were interventricular septal hypertrophy (10 cases), atrial septal defect (7 cases), significant patent ductus arteriosus (5 cases), ventricular septal defect (2 cases) and tetralogy of Fallot (1 case). Among them, 20 neonates (29.9%) were preterm babies, and 21 neonates (31.3%) were large babies. On follow up echocardiograpic examination between 2 and 12 months of life, all but 2 infants (received cardiac operation due to VSD or Tetralogy of Fallot) was improved spontaneously. And combined extracardiac anomalies were tracheoesophageal fistula (2 cases), imperforated anus (1 case) and corpus callosum agenesis (1 case). Only one preterm baby was dead due to necrotizing enterocolitis, but did not have cardiac disease. CONCLUSION: Pre-existing maternal diabetes was associated with the development of neonatal cardiac anomalies, but the prognosis was good in this study.

Status of Alternative Therapies Used by the Children Visiting the 'Growth Clinic' / 대한소아내분비학회지

PURPOSE: Although growth hormone treatment is now widely used to treat some group of children with short stature, it is still expensive and many parents are seeking alternative therapies. We report the current status of alternative therapies for children visiting the 'growth clinic' in a single tertiary center. METHODS: Questionnaire about the usage of alternative therapy was used. Parents were asked whether they used alternative therapies and where they achieved the information. Also, they were asked whether the treatment was effective, and whether they would continue to use the alternative therapy. RESULTS: Two hundred and twenty nine children (127 boys, 102 girls) visiting the growth clinic in Dongsan Medical Center from February 2005 to January 2006 were analyzed. Their ages were between 6.1 years to 15.4 years (mean 10.4 years). Height Standard Deviation Score (SDS) were between -3.2 to 1.0 (mean -1.1). Twelve boys (9.4%) and 7 girls (6.9%) were more than zero in height SDS value. Among 145 children (63.3%) who used the alternative therapy, supplemental foods and oriental herbs were most widely used (43.3% each) followed by over-the-counter drugs. They attained the information most frequently from their neighbors followed by television, newspaper, and internet. More than half (57.9%) of the parents answered that the alternative therapies were not effective. However, 46.9% of the parents answered they would continuously use the therapy though it is ineffective. CONCLUSION: Many patients visiting the 'growth clinic' for short stature had experiences on the alternative therapies. Although these therapies seemed not quite effective, many parents answered that they would continue alternative therapy.

Classification and Conceptualization of Clinical Documents using Formal Concept Analysis / 대한의료정보학회지

OBJECTIVE: Ontology is becoming a core research field in the realm of medical informatics. The objective of our ongoing research is to explore the potential role of Formal Concept Analysis(FCA) in a context-based ontology building support in a medical domain. The concept hierarchy plays an important role as the backbone of ontology, but its construction is a complex and time-consuming process. We present a novel approach to the automatic acquisition of taxonomies or concept hierarchies from clinical documents. METHODS: Our approach is based on FCA, a mathematical tool used in data analysis and knowledge engineering. It provides methods to group objects and attributes into concepts, pairs of object-sets(clinical documents) and attribute-sets(fields contained in the clinical documents), such that the binary relation can be presented in a concept lattice. Based on the FCA, we have applied out approach for 8 clinical documents used in a university hospital. As a result of our experiments, we can extract 15 concepts with 7 common fields that can be shared with 8 clinical documents. RESULTS: We show how FCA can be used to classify clinical documents and acquire a concept hierarchy for the medical domain out of the clinical documents with maximal property factorization. CONCLUSION: The whole of our work is based on the concept lattice of which allows to construct a "well defined" ontological concept hierarchy. As an application of this approach, we presented some results of classification of clinical documents with maximally factorized common fields. We have shown that FCA can be useful method to classify and analyze various medical data by constructing concept hierarchy. From that concept hierarchy, we can acquire well-structured facts and knowledges in medical domain.