Francis Sahngun Nahm

Using diagnostic testing to determine the presence or absence of a disease is essential in clinical practice. In many cases, test results are obtained as continuous values and require a process of conversion and interpretation and into a dichotomous form to determine the presence of a disease. The primary method used for this process is the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The ROC curve is used to assess the overall diagnostic performance of a test and to compare the performance of

Conventional statistical tests are usually called parametric tests. Parametric tests are used more frequently than nonparametric tests in many medical articles, because most of the medical researchers are familiar with and the statistical software packages strongly support parametric tests. Parametric tests require important assumption; assumption of normality which means that distribution of sample means is normally distributed. However, parametric test can be misleading when this assumption is

Since BC 400 when Hippocrates used temperature in a diagnosis by applying mud to a patient's body and speculating that dry areas had disease, temperature has been an important area of interest in medicine. The skin is a very important organ in temperature regulation, and body temperature is controlled by the combined control of the central and autonomic nerve system. Infrared thermography (IRT) detects infrared light emitted by the body to visualize changes in body heat due to abnormalities in t

Transforaminal epidural injection is an effective method for treating spinal pain but can cause devastating complications that result from accidental vascular uptake of the injectate or a direct vascular injury. We prospectively evaluated the patient factors that might be associated with intravascular uptake during transforaminal epidural injections. A total of 2145 injections were performed on 1088 patients under contrast-enhanced real-time fluoroscopic guidance. The collected data included the

A lumbar sympathetic ganglion block (LSB) is a therapeutic method for complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) affecting the lower limbs. Recently, LSB with botulinum toxin type A and B was introduced as a novel method to achieve longer duration of analgesia. In this study, we compared the botulinum toxin type A (BTA) with botulinum toxin type B (BTB) in performing LSB on patients with CRPS. LSB was performed with either BTA or BTB on patients with CRPS in their lower extremities. The length of tim

In most medical research the P value is commonly used to describe test results. Because the power of statistical test is influenced by sample size, the null hypothesis can be rejected (P<0.05) in most cases if the sample size is tremendously big even if the real difference (or relationship) is extremly small. To overcome the weakness of using the P value, effect size can be used in the statistical analysis. Effect size can be defined as the "degree to which the phenomenon (difference or relation

Laboratory tests for herpes zoster (HZ) are required to confirm varicella zoster virus (VZV) infection, especially when a skin lesion is not typical or apparent. The serological test for VZV IgM antibody is simple and cost-effective; however, the change in the VZV IgM-positive rate over the time course of the disease has not been investigated. Therefore, we conducted an observational study to evaluate the positive rate of VZV IgM results during the time course of HZ and estimate the VZV IgM-posi

The treatment methods for PHN vary among hospitals. The establishment of treatment recommendation for PHN treatment is necessary. In addition, public relations activities are required in order to inform the patients of PHN treatments by pain clinicians.

The reliability of IRT for assessing skin temperature abnormalities in CRPS was high when the ROIs were determined based on patient history and symptoms.

As delayed displacement of bone cement can result in progression of an osteoporotic compression fracture of the vertebrae, we propose that sufficient penetration of bone cement into the microstructure of the trabecular bone of the vertebral body during kyphoplasty could reduce the risk of this phenomenon.

Lumbar sympathetic block (LSB) is an effective method for relief of sympathetically mediated pain in the lower extremities. To prolong the sympathetic blockade, sympathetic destruction with alcohol or radiofrequency has been used. The pre-ganglionic sympathetic nerves are cholinergic, and botulinum toxin (BTX) has been found to inhibit the release of acetylcholine at the cholinergic nerve terminals. Moreover, BTX type B (BTX-B) is more convenient to use than BTX type A. Based on these findings,

According to the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and American Medical Association (AMA), the diagnostic criteria for complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) require the presence of skin temperature asymmetry. In CRPS, it is generally accepted that the temperature of skin of affected limbs changes from warm to cold; however, in our clinical practice, we have experienced many cases with different thermographic characteristics. Therefore, we conducted a retrospective multicente

HA administered epidurally had a therapeutic effect on the allodynia and hyperalgesia induced by chronic compression of the DRG.