• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.21-28
• /
• 2024

This study analyzed the current status of care policies and senior citizen issues in Korea, which has entered a super-aging society, and attempted to suggest improvement measures for desirable convergence policies. The problems of the elderly in Korea have emerged as health problems, poverty problems, loss of roles, and care problems due to changes in the concept of family, values, and socioeconomic structure. In addition, poor seniors need jobs and employment policies, and healthy middle-class seniors need policy development to enable leisure activities and volunteer activities. In particular, it is necessary to establish policies to enable people to spend the rest of their lives in elderly care facilities and elderly care hospitals through community care policies. The super-aging society accounts for more than 20% of the total population among those aged 65 or older, and according to the National Statistical Office, it is expected to become a super-aging society by 2025. Elderly welfare policies must provide various programs and the needs and services of elderly care, and in the future, a super-aging society will need to secure a lot of financial resources and maintain a productive population to cover the financial resources. In other words, the human life cycle is from birth to death, and when the ratio of natural deaths of the elderly and infants born is appropriate, the society and the country can be seen as stable, vibrant, and healthy societies.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
• /
• v.35 no.6
• /
• pp.499-510
• /
• 2017

Traffic accident fatalities in Korea in 2016 was 4,292 and 1,732 cases were deaths of elderly people. In spite of this, the researches on behaviors of the elderly when crossing roads, are rather limited. The purpose of this study is to investigate and analyze road crossing behavior characteristics of the elderly, when crossing roads, especially focusing on the characteristics of pedestrians and vehicles. Cross-sectional data was collected from six different sites in two regions and the following results was identified. First, at road crossings, 528 cases(84.3%) out of 626 conflict situations of the elderly and 303 cases(63.3%) out of 478 conflict situations of the non-elderly pedestrians were found to be dangerous, respectively. The elderly tend to face a statistically significant risk of 3.11 times higher than that of non-elderly people. Second, 519 cases(82.9%) of jaywalking occurred in 626 conflict cases of the elderly and 375 cases(78.5%) of jaywalking in 478 conflict events of non-elderly persons, which indicates the elderly's 1.34 times higher trend compared with the non-elderly's. Third, the pedestrian safety margin (PSM) analysis showed that the PSM of the elderly and the non-elderly were 3.33 seconds and 4.04 seconds respectively, which is 17.5% high. Fourth, the difference in pedestrian safety interval was examined by dividing the speed of approaching vehicle into less than 30km/h, above 30km/h and less than 50km/h, and over 50km/h. There was no significant difference between the PSM of coming vehicles with the speed less than 30km/h and the PSM of approaching with the speed 30km/h~50km/h, but the conflicts with vehicle of the speed above 50km/h show significantly lower PSM than with vehicle speed of 30km/h~50km/h. Finally, when the risk threshold is set to less than 2.5 seconds, the analysis shows that older pedestrians tend to cross roads dangerously 1.59~2.53 times than younger pedestrians. The results set forth here can be used as a basis for constructing the elderly safety measures at present and a potential basis for autonomous vehicle safety application in the future for solving the issue of the difference in crossing behavior between elderly and non-elderly pedestrians.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.260-265
• /
• 2016

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate tolerance to adjuvant chemotherapy, and to compare survival between treatments using only surgery and using surgery with adjuvant chemotherapy, in elderly patients with advanced gastric cancer who were ${\geq}75years$ of age. Materials and Methods: Patients ${\geq}75years$ of age who were diagnosed with pathological stage II or III gastric cancer were identified retrospectively and categorized into the surgery only and surgery with adjuvant chemotherapy groups. Clinicopathological and survival data were compared between these two groups. Results: Among the 130 patients studied, 67 patients underwent curative surgery only, and 63 patients received adjuvant chemotherapy after curative surgery. In the latter group, adverse events were reported in 24 patients (38.1%). The treatments were discontinued in 19 patients (30.2%) owing to any reason. The overall 5-year survival rates of the surgery only and the surgery with adjuvant chemotherapy groups did not differ significantly (44.1% vs. 30.7%, respectively; P=0.804). Among 90 death events, deaths from recurrences of gastric cancer occurred in 42 patients. Multivariate analyses revealed that the American Society of Anesthesiologists score and the depths of tumor invasions were related to survival, and the addition of adjuvant chemotherapy after surgery did not influence survival. Conclusions: The decision for the addition of adjuvant chemotherapy for elderly patients should be taken after considering the condition of individual patients and their life expectancies.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.7
• /
• pp.3157-3161
• /
• 2014

Background: Unlike for fit elderly metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) patients, general approaches to initial treatment for the frail older mCRC patients are not clear. Our aim was to evaluate the efficiency and safety of first-line single-agent treatment in one such group. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively evaluated mCRC patients aged 70 or older with an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance score of 2. They had no prior treatment and underwent first-line single-agent capecitabine or other monotherapies until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Results: Thirty-six patients were included. Most (n:28, 77.8%) were treated with capecitabine. One patient achieved a complete response and 5 patients had a partial response for an overall response rate of 16.6%. Twelve patients (33.3%) remained stable. Median progression free survival was 5 months (confidence interval (CI), %; 3.59-6.40) and median overall survival was 10 months (95 CI%; 8.1-11.8). Grade 3-4 toxicity was found in 6 patients (16.6%). Febrile neutropenia was not observed and there were no toxicity-associated deaths. Conclusions: Capecitabine is a safe chemotherapeutic agent with moderate activity for first-line treatment of older metastatic colorectal cancer patients with limited performance status.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
• /
• v.25 no.8
• /
• pp.81-87
• /
• 2020

In this paper, proposes a health status monitoring system for socially marginalized elderly households living alone. This system is implemented by collecting various PHR biometric signals and residential environment information through IoT devices. In addition, the company aims to establish a basic infrastructure that can understand the situation of lonely deaths and implement prevention programs by strengthening the predictive ability through data analysis of the DB server based on PHR and information collected from IoT sensors. The sensor consists of an environmental information collection sensor and a noncontact and wearable sensor for biometric signal collection. A gateway is required to transmit the collected data to the server, and the prototype is presented in this paper. The paper has a discussion purpose of policy task for expanding medical welfare service. The results of this study are believed to help expand services to the socially marginalized and improve the medical environment of the people.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.17 no.8
• /
• pp.454-462
• /
• 2017

The purpose of this study was to explore the lonely-death phenomenon and to understand the circumstances surrounding the lonely-death cases among elderly people by examining the articles on such phenomenon and the media reports of such cases. The cases of lonely death reported from 2007 to 2017 were used. Case analysis was conducted, and the news articles that described the lonely death cases were identified using an internet search engine. Forty seven cases were analyzed. Several risk factors emerged from the data obtained, such as economic hardship, chronic illness, mental health problems like alcohol addiction, social isolation, disconnection from family members or the neighborhood, unemployment, single household, unmarried or divorced status, and living in an urban area. Based on the findings, prevention strategies were addressed.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
• /
• v.56 no.1
• /
• pp.31-40
• /
• 2023

Objectives: This study investigated the effect of cognitive impairment on the association between social network properties and mortality among older Korean adults. Methods: This study used data from the Korean Social Life, Health, and Aging Project. It obtained 814 older adults' complete network maps across an entire village in 2011-2012. Participants' deaths until December 31, 2020 were confirmed by cause-of-death statistics. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to assess the risks of poor social network properties (low degree centrality, perceived loneliness, social non-participation, group-level segregation, and lack of support) on mortality according to cognitive impairment. Results: In total, 675 participants (5510.4 person-years) were analyzed, excluding those with missing data and those whose deaths could not be verified. Along with cognitive impairment, all social network properties except loneliness were independently associated with mortality. When stratified by cognitive function, some variables indicating poor social relations had higher risks among older adults with cognitive impairment, with adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) of 2.12 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.34 to 3.35) for social nonparticipation, 1.58 (95% CI, 0.94 to 2.65) for group-level segregation, and 3.44 (95% CI, 1.55 to 7.60) for lack of support. On the contrary, these effects were not observed among those with normal cognition, with adjusted HRs of 0.73 (95% CI, 0.31 to 1.71), 0.96 (95% CI, 0.42 to 2.21), and 0.95 (95% CI, 0.23 to 3.96), respectively. Conclusions: The effect of social network properties was more critical among the elderly with cognitive impairment. Older adults with poor cognitive function are particularly encouraged to participate in social activities to reduce the risk of mortality.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.219-225
• /
• 2012

This study is analyzed the implementation of medical aid for patients over 65 years of age who are among the discharged from hospitals with the capacity of over 100 beds. I have analyzed it with the data from an in-depth study of injury surveillance of discharged patients from hospitals done in a national project in 2004. After analyzing the results of the data from the beginning of this national project to the data collected in 2008, I could get the results that the rate of discharged patients over 65 years of age increased every year. Among them, the rate of discharged women was higher than that of the men, and the rate of deaths while at the hospital for patients over 65 years of age was higher than that of patients less than 65 years of age. The rate of operations done on patients over 65 was lower than that of patients under 65 years of age. The results of a diagnosis of popular symptoms showed that the rate of the diagnosis of cerebral infraction and structure of the heart at the circulatory organ was higher. In addition, the rate of the diagnosis of lung cancer, pneumonia, and chronic obstructive lung disease was higher, as well as the rates of gastric cancer, diabetes, liver cancer, and colorectal cancer. The results showed that the operation of the nerve system or cardiovascular system were higher. Therefore, according to this result, we should prioritize and allocate resources to the elderly people when setting up a management policy. And also, we should promote healthcare for elderly people after considering the characteristics of the implementation of medical aid in preparation of a super-aged society.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
• /
• v.21 no.11
• /
• pp.2095-2102
• /
• 2017

In this paper, we implemented the elderly home training contents provide individual exercise prescription according to the user's athletic ability and provide personalized program to the elderly individual. Health promotion is essential for overcoming the low health longevity of senior citizens preparing for aging population. Therefore, the lower body strengthening exercise to prevent falls is crucial to prevent a fall in the number of deaths of senior citizens. In this game model, the elderly are aiming at home training contents that can be found to feel that the elderly are going out of walk and exercising in the natural environment. To achieve this, Kinect extracts a specific bone model provide by the Kinect Sensor to generate the feature vectors and recognizes the movements and motion of the user. The recognition test using the Kinect sensor showed a recognition rate of about 80 to 97%.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
• /
• v.10 no.7
• /
• pp.391-397
• /
• 2019

In 2016, the number of suicides per 100,000 population in Korea was 24.6, which is the highest record of OECD countries. The number of suicide deaths increased with age. Elderly people have a higher risk of completed suicide than any other age group. The purpose of this study was to analyze the panel data of the Korean Welfare Panel Study to identify the factors affecting the suicide of Korean older people. This study analyzed the data of the 11th Korean Welfare Panel Study, which was constructed in 2016. The mean age of the participants was 75.55 years and 37% were man and 63% were women. The annual prevalence of suicidal ideation was 3.4%. The effects of depression(Exp(B)=1.113) and subjective health status((Exp(B)=.767) on suicidal ideation was statistically significant by stepwise logistic regression analysis(Nagelkerke $R^2=.248$). Therefore, for the effective application of suicide prevention program for the older people, assessment of subjective health status and depression screening should be preceded.