No abstract

As the most rapid increasing population of the elderly, over 65 year-old, it was interested in better health and life quality but found to have hearing impairments in many cases. The purpose of this study was to investigate hearing loss for age and suggest hearing handicap scales for hearing impairment of the elderly. To know psychological, social, and emotional effects of the elderly hearing impairment, five questionnaires were evaluated to 67 participants who are over 65 years old. They completed five questionnaires-The Korean Hearing Handicap Inventory for Elderly-Screening (KHHIE-S), interpreted Attitudes Toward Loss of Hearing Questionnaire (ALHQ), Short form of Geriatric Depression Scale, Korean version (SGDS), Korean version of World Health Organization Quality Of Life assessment (WHOQOL-BREF), newly developed Geriatric Everyday Life Health Index (GELHI). The mean pure tone threshold was worsened with age especially high frequency. The audiogram for women showed gradually sloping from low frequency to high frequency and for men drew abruptly falling at over 1 kHz high frequency. The scales of hearing handicap recorded more negative scores through hearing impairment degree was normal to profound. Conclusively, this study was presented hearing impairment for the elderly, and hearing handicap scales for the elderly which can be useful clinically and academically.

Many men over the age of 40 suffer from erectile dysfunction (ED) for a variety of reasons. In addition, more than 40% of ED patients have hypertensive disease at the same time. Tadalafil (TD) is a selective and reversible inhibitor of cyclic guanosine monophosphate-specific phosphodiesterase type 5 (cGMP-specific PDE-5). It is an insoluble drug with biopharmaceutics classification system class-II and was prepared by wet granulation with a solubilizing agent. Amlodipine besylate (AM) is a calcium channel antagonist that is effective in preventing systolic hypertension and stroke, and is manufactured using physical mix method. We used TD and AM to fabricate a double-layer complex tablet that can prevent or treat two diseases at the same time. Scanning electron microscope (SEM), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), differential scanning calorimeter (DSC), X-ray diffraction (XRD) were analyzed for confirming chemical and physical characterization. Also, in vitro dissolution test was conducted to evaluate the dissolution rate of tablet at pH=1.2. In conclusion, the rapid release of two drugs in the double layer tablet was confirmed and could be applied as a pharmaceutical therapeutic agent.

The purpose of this study was to analyse the frequency characteristics of 583 Korean meaningful monosyllabic words by their initial•middle•final phonemes to understand speech recognition ability based on hearing configuration more accurately. Normal hearing 20 Korean young adults(10 males and 10 females) produced 583 words in context situations. Data were collected by using Computerized Speech Lab(CSL 4300B) and analyzed by using Pratt 4.3.14. According to 19 initial consonants,

Geriatric hearing loss can be related to dementia and mental health status. As the symptoms of dementia includes impairments of memory, naming, visuospatial dysfunction, and mental health status, the hearing loss might aggravate those symptoms and vise versa. Therefore, the degree of these symptoms should be evaluated for successful aural rehabilitation of the elderly hearing impaired. Korean version of Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE-K) has been commonly used for assessing dementia for Korean and Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire (SPMSQ) has been widely used to check the status of the mental health of the elderly. However, they are not appropriate for assessing for the baseline and improvement of aural rehabilitation due to old-fashioned and biased characteristics of questions. Applying MMSE-K and SPMSQ, new simple geriatric mental health assessment tool, Geriatric Everyday Life Health Index (GELHI) was developed in Korean version considering Korean culture and current social situations with 12 testing items. GELHI evaluates the short-term and long-term memory, daily life, the recent events, mathematical calculations and so on. The scores ranges from 0 to 12, which indicates normal to severe impairment of intellectual capacity and mental health status of the elderly. GELHI was administered to 207 people aged over 65 years, 87 males and 120 females, by interviewing technique. The internal consistency of GELHI was verified by Cronbach alpha, .688, showing high homogeneity of the scale. The reliability of GELHI ｗas found to be acceptable with Guttman's split-half correlation coefficient, .728. GElHI scores were influenced by gender, age, educational status, marital status, health status, economic status, and the frequency of contacts of their sons and daughters. GELHI was appeared to assess various cognitive and intellectual functions of the elderly in terms of mental health status. Therefore, GEHLI can be applied for setting a baseline and assessing the degree of improvement for rehabilitation process in a variety of geriatric cognitive disorder. Especially, GELHI can be utilized for the elderly hearing impaired who have week mental health status but need decent rehabilitation.