Measurement of Contrast Sensitivity in Patients with Behçet's Disease without Ocular Involvement

PURPOSE: To evaluate contrast sensitivity in patients with Behçet's disease (BD) without ocular involvement. METHODS: The study group was composed of 47 BD patients (20 to 50 years of age) who did not have ocular involvement. The control group was composed of 47 normal volunteers who were similar to the study group in terms of age and gender. No participants in this study had any ocular or systemic pathologies except for BD. The contrast sensitivity measurements were performed using the Functional Acuity Contrast Test under photopic conditions, and the results were compared between the two groups. RESULTS: The mean age of the BD patients and control subjects was 34.5 ± 9.7 and 33.2 ± 7.6 years, respectively. The mean disease duration of the BD patients was 5.5 ± 6.4 years. There was a statistically significant decrease at five spatial frequencies (A, 1.5; B, 3; C, 6; D, 2; and E, 18 cycles per degree) in patients with BD compared with control subjects (p < 0.001, p = 0.004, p = 0.002, p < 0.001, and p = 0.001, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: The contrast sensitivity of BD patients without ocular involvement was lower than that of the control group. Further studies seem mandatory to confirm our results.

Proposal of Laboratory Test Panel Based on Patients' Chief Complaints in Emergency Department / 대한진단검사의학회지

BACKGROUND: A test panel is a group of tests that are simultaneously performed for diagnosis and follow-up of patients. Organ-specific or disease-specific test panels are currently available. Since the patient's chief complaint plays a key role in obtaining the personal and medical history and performing physical examinations, we proposed a test panel based on the chief complaints of the patients. METHODS: We collected data from 3,127 adults with apparent symptoms who visited the emergency department from April 2009 to May 2009. Subsequently, we classified the patients' chief complaints, ordered the laboratory tests on the basis of these complaints, considered the patients' disease entities, and reviewed the relevant literature. RESULTS: The patients were categorized into 14 groups on the basis of the most common chief complaints presented in the emergency department. We first selected the basic test panels and then organized the test panel for each chief complaint to enable differential diagnosis. CONCLUSIONS: We proposed test panels based on the chief complaints of the patients; these test panels could allow rapid diagnosis and be more useful than the organ-specific or disease-specific tests in critical pathway development. The next step will be evaluating the efficiency and cost effectiveness of the test panel that we suggested.