| Jong-Hyock Park | 3 Articles |
<sec><title>Objectives</title><p>To evaluate associations between hospital volume, costs, and length of stay (LOS), and clinical and demographic outcome factors for five types of cancer resection. The main dependent variables were cost and LOS; the primary independent variable was volume.</p></sec><sec><title>Methods</title><p>Data were obtained from claims submitted to the Korean National Health Insurance scheme. We identified patients who underwent the following surgical procedures: pneumonectomy, colectomy, mastectomy, cystectomy, and esophagectomy. Hospital volumes were divided into quartiles.</p></sec><sec><title>Results</title><p>Independent predictors of high costs and long LOS included old age, low health insurance contribution, non-metropolitan residents, emergency admission, Charlson score > 2, public hospital ownership, and teaching hospitals. After adjusting for relevant factors, there was an inverse relationship between volume and costs/LOS. The highest volume hospitals had the lowest procedure costs and LOS. However, this was not observed for cystectomy.</p></sec><sec><title>Conclusion</title><p>Our findings suggest an association between patient and clinical factors and greater costs and LOS per surgical oncologic procedure, with the exception of cystectomy. Yet, there were no clear associations between hospitals’ cost of care and risk-adjusted mortality.</p></sec>
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Health status and health behaviors are associated with academic achievement in children and adolescents. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether skipping breakfast and being overweight are related to academic achievement of Korean adolescents. Methods Cross-sectional data on a sample of 1,652 high-school seniors (942 males and 710 females) drawn from the 2004 Korea Education Employment Panel were analyzed. Results A higher proportion of males (15.3%) than females (6.1%) was overweight (<i>p</i> < 0.001); 37% of males and 41% of females reported skipping breakfast. Overall test scores were significantly higher for females than males (<i>p</i> < 0.05), and in language and foreign language subjects. However, both males and females who reported skipping breakfast had significantly lower scores in language, mathematics, and foreign language than those who did not report skipping breakfast. Overweight males had a lower probability than normal-weight males of having the highest language scores (OR = 0.52, <i>p</i> < 0.05), but there was no difference among females. Females who skipped breakfast had a lower probability of having the highest scores in language (OR = 0.41, <i>p</i> < 0.05), mathematics (OR = 0.24, <i>p</i> < 0.01), or foreign language (OR = 0.18, <i>p</i> < 0.01), while males had a lower probability of having the highest scores in language only (OR = 0.46, <i>p</i> < 0.05). Conclusion Skipping breakfast and being overweight are associated with poor academic achievement in Korean adolescents. Eating breakfast and weight control is being discussed as the overlooked factors that may influence better academic achievement. Citations
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There are an increasing number of studies being carried out on depression in patients with diabetes. Individuals with diabetes have been reported as having a higher prevalence of depression compared to those without diabetes. However, only a few studies involving Korean patients have been conducted. The aims of this study were to examine the prevalence of depression and to find various risk factors according to the degree of depression among Korean patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Methods An Ansan-community-based epidemiological study was conducted from 2005 to 2012. The total number of participants in this study was 3,540, from which patients with diabetes (<i>n</i> = 753) have been selected. The presence of depression was evaluated using the Beck Depression Inventory total score. Results The prevalence of depression was 28.8%. The mean age of participants was 55.5 ± 8.2 years. We divided the participants into three groups (without-depression, moderate-depression, and severe-depression groups) to examine the depression prevalence among Korean T2DM patients. The unemployed participants had 2.40 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.21–4.76], the low-income participants had 2.57 (95% CI 1.52–4.35), the participants using an oral diabetes medicine or insulin had 2.03 (95% CI 1.25–3.32), the participants who are currently smoking had 2.03 (95% CI 1.10–3.73), and those without regular exercise had 1.91 (95% CI 1.17–3.14) times higher odds of depression in the severe-depression group, compared with the without-depression group. Conclusion There was a significant association between depression prevalence and diabetes, and we found various risk factors according to the degree of depression in Korean patients with T2DM. Citations
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