The Prescribing Patterns of Antipsychotic Drugs and Antiparkinsonian Drugs in Elderly Patients with Dementia

Background@#The number of patients with dementia continues to increase as the age of aging continues to grow. Psychiatric symptoms caused by senile dementia are controlled using antipsychotics. However, these antipsychotics can lead to Parkinson's disease, and abuse of dopamine derivatives such as levodopa among Parkinsonian drugs can lead to psychosis. Therefore, we evaluated the patterns of prescribed antipsychotics and antiparkinsonian drugs in patients with senile dementia. @*Methods@#We used data from the sample of elderly patients from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA-APS-2016). We analyzed the patterns of prescribing antipsychotics and antiparkinsonian drugs including prescribed daily dosage, period of prescription, and number of patients with both antipsychotics and antiparkinsonian drugs for senile dementia. @*Results@#Among the 159,391 patients with dementia included in this analysis, 4,963 patients (3.1%) and 16,499 patients (10.4%) were prescribed typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs, respectively. The most frequently prescribed typical antipsychotic was haloperidol (4,351 patients with dementia), whereas the atypical agent was quetiapine (12,719 patients). The most frequently prescribed antiparkinsonian drugs were in the order of levodopa/carbidopa, benztropine, and ropinirole. In addition, 1,103 and 3,508 patients prescribed typical and atypical antipsychotics, respectively, were co-prescribed antiparkinsonian drugs. @*Conclusions@#Atypical antipsychotics were the preferred prescription in patients with senile dementia. The prescription dose was relatively low; however, the average treatment duration was mostly long-term. Selection of antipsychotics and/or antiparkinsonian drugs should be made carefully in senile dementia and the causal relationship of adverse drug reactions needs further study.

The analysis of the present status of the medical internet sites in Korea

BACKGROUND: After the World-Wide-Web(www) appeared, history has abruptly fallen in the new era of the Internet. In Korea, after the first medical internet site appeared, there was a major development in the WWW. But the quality and quantity of the web-page remains in infancy. Therefore, through the analysis of the Korean medical internet sites on present status, directions for development of Korean medical internet sites can be made. METHODS: From April 1st, 1999 to June 30th, 1999 in the Korean web sites, we visited 1044 sites. They included "Medmark Korea" representing medical search engine, "Eulji medical library" in the Eulji Medical College Hospital, and the medical sites of the "Yahoo Korea", "naver.com", and "simmani.com". Through this internet search, the information about locations, first publication year, classification by characteristics of homepage, speciality, web service form was obtained. Among these sites, acquireing from insufficient source further, questions were sent to the webmasters of 143 websites by e-mail. The questions included 7 items on the characteristic of webmasters, 8 items on the general characteristics of internet sites, 8 items on the contents, and their own comments. RESULTS: The occupation of webmasters was as follows: were physicians 94.4%, were male. According to age distribution, those in their thirties was 48.2%, and forties, 33.3%. Amone the 521 websites confirmed, there were 44 sites in 199 151 in 1996, 237 in 1997, and 79 in 1999. According to the distribution of location, metropolitan areas including Seoul, Inchon, Kyonggi occupied 68.9% among total. The main portion of the intentional visitors was ordinary people comprising 39.2%, members 9.8%, and physicians 7.7%. Concerning the purposes of publication, 38.7% of websites intended for health education to citizens, 31.0% for publicity of hospital or organizations, and 15.5% for exchange of information between members. For the most significant contents, 26.6% focused on the common-sense health issues, 35.7% on exchange of special medical information, 8.4% on education data for medical students, and 13.3% on publicity of hospitals. For the update interval, 22.0% renewed their sites within 1 week, 22.7% in 1 month, 23.4% in 3 months, and 20.6% in 6 months. For the effectiveness of homepage, the rate of `good' and `very good' response was 52.8%. CONCLUSION: Our investigation, showed that medical internet sites are lead by those in their thirties and forties. Web sites was concentrated to metropolitan areas where informational infrastructure was well developed. It is emphasized that efforts to informationalization by are needed by, governmental medical database systems should be established, and that the guidelines which enables validity of medical information should be set forth.

A Case of Tracheal Papillomas Treated With Bronchofibroscopic Nd-YAG Laser Therapy / 결핵

In contrast to juvenile laryngeal papillomatosis, which occurs most often in children and teenagers and is usually self limited, soliatry papilomas in adults are one of uncommon tumors of airway, and have a higher incidence of cancer. They are caused by the respiratory infection of human papilloma virus(HPV). They culd spread to more distal airways and have a tendency of recurrence after limited surgical excision. Recently endoscopic therapies such as Nd-YAG laser, electrocautery, and cryotherapy provide extremely effective treatment modalities. We report a case of solitary tracheal papillomas in a 48 year-old man who presented with cough, scanty hemoptysis, and functional evidence of central airway obstruction. He was successfully treated by a Nd-TAG laser therapy via fiberoptic bronchoscopy under the local anesthesia.