A Case of Mania Associated with Hypericum Perforatum in a Patient with Major Depression / 대한정신약물학회지

Recently Korean Food and Drug Administration approved Hypericum perforatum preparations (St. John's wort) as an over-the-counter drug. The authors reported a case of Hypericum perforatum induced mania in a patient with major depressive disorder and reviewed. A seventy-five years old female patient was diagnosed as major depression 5 years ago, and had been admitted in the psychiatric ward twice and had received regular outpatient treatment. Since October 1998, she took paroxetine 20 mg, and bromazepam 1.5 mg constantly. But all of a sudden, she stopped taking the drugs on June 20th 2000, and took Hypericum perforatum 300 mg three times daily. Ten days after, she became abruptly talkative, irritable, hyperactive, and euphoric. She was diagnosed as Hypericum perforatum-induced mania. Manic symptoms came down after several days by discontinuation of taking Hypericum perforatum. Since then she has been got a continuous treatment with paroxetine 20 mg, and she is in full remission state now. Hypericum perforatum is one of herb extracts, which is known to have the antidepressant effect like traditional and newer antidepressants. The side effects of Hypericum perforatum are gastrointestinal disturbance, allergy reaction, fatigue, photosensitivity. And more serious side effect is drug-drug interaction due to it's inducing effect of cytochrome P450 and P-glycoprotein. It is possible to switch from depression to manic episode as was in this case. Although it was approved as an over-the-counter drug in Korea, the use of Hypericum perforatum need to be thoroughly examined to prevent misused if not fully understood.

The Implementation of Homecare Nursing Network System Using Wireless Network / 대한의료정보학회지

The purpose of this project is to implement "Homecare Nursing Network System" using wireless network which was able to manage homecare service efficiently. Therefore, by completing the project of "Homecare Nursing Network System", the research team connected the headquarter and the local homecare service offices over the Internet, and built the database and application programs to operate the offices. Homecare nurses are using the PDA(personal digital assistant) in order to provide homecare nursing service, to record the patients' data, and to send and receive the data in real time. It results in improving the quality of the homecare service through the computerized knowledge-based assess and intervention algorithms. The team also has implemented the homepage to introduce the homecare office and to provide the homecare service information. "Homecare Nursing Network System" allows us to manage homecare nursing service under the computerized environment, to keep track of the homecare nursing document efficiently, to improve the quality of homecare nursing, and to expand its business territory.

Error Minimization of Respiratory Air Flow Measurement by Pneumotachometer / 대한의료정보학회지

Pneumotachometer is the most widely used respiratory air flow sensor. But the measurement error hard to be ignored exists, since the empirical calibration carve in a closed form cannot provide accurate flow values at all measured pressure data. Any possible distortion of the calibration curve further increases measurement error, which cannot he corrected by the conventional calibration method. The present study suggests a new error correction algorithm applicable to any type of pneumotachometer equipped with computer-based data processing device. This algorithm evaluates conductance error correction coefficients at each digitized pressure level based on the cumulative pressure data obtained by manual volume syrange stroke operation at different speeds. Experiment demonstrated error minimization down to below 1/10 in mean stroke volume measurement compared to the conventional calibration curve method. The standard deviation of the stroke volume also decreased down to below 1/2 of the conventional method. The present technique can be introduced with no difficulty to the calibration procedure the American Thoracic Society, and expected to guarantee the accuracy and reliability of the respiratory air flow measurement during spirometric tests.

Validation of the Histogram Summation Technique for Measurement Error Minimization of Respiratory Air Flow Rate / 대한의료정보학회지

The present study performed an experiment to validate the histogram summation technique developed for measurement error minimization of respiratory air flow rate2). Five sets of manual stroke operation data(MSO#1 5) of 1 [LI each were acquired at varying speeds. Selected sets of these data were used to estimate the conductance correction factors reflecting the resistance-flow character -istics. Then the correction factors were applied to different sets of the data to evaluate mean SD of the volume measurement error. When the resistance was linearly compensated without conductance correction, the relative error was 2.3% marginally within the ATS standard limit of 3%. With the histogram summation techinque applied, it has dramatically decreased down to within 1%. For a newly input flow data, the error was maintained within 1.5%. Therefore, the histogram summation techinque minimized the measurement error consistently and reproducibly. With increased number of strokes included in the correction factor estimation process, the error decreased at a rate of 0.5 [mL!S0strokesj. However, no more than 50 stroke data were necessary to keep the measurement error within 1.5%. This corresponded to only 25 MSO, thus the histogram summation technique has been demonstrated to be consistent, reproducible, and practical technique for measurement error minimization of respiratory air flow rate.