• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.327-335
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• 2014

Objectives: Several epidemiological studies on medical care utilization prior to suicide have considered the motivation of suicide, but focused on the influence of physical illnesses. Medical care expenditure in suicide completers with non-illness-related causes has not been investigated. Methods: Suicides motivated by non-illness-related factors were identified using the investigator's note from the National Police Agency, which was then linked to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment data. We investigated the medical care expenditures of cases one year prior to committing suicide and conducted a case-control study using conditional logistic regression analysis after adjusting for age, gender, area of residence, and socioeconomic status. Results: Among the 4515 suicides motivated by non-illness-related causes, medical care expenditures increased in only the last 3 months prior to suicide in the adolescent group. In the younger group, the proportion of total medical expenditure for external injuries was higher than that in the older groups. Conditional logistic regression analysis showed significant associations with being a suicide completer and having a rural residence, low socioeconomic status, and high medical care expenditure. After stratification into the four age groups, a significant positive association with medical care expenditures and being a suicide completer was found in the adolescent and young adult groups, but no significant results were found in the elderly groups for both men and women. Conclusions: Younger adults who committed suicide motivated by non-illness-related causes had a higher proportion of external injuries and more medical care expenditures than their controls did. This reinforces the notion that suicide prevention strategies for young people with suicidal risk factors are needed.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.15-26
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• 1999

The purpose of the study was to investigate brand images and fashion leaderships of women's wear manufacturers targeting middle-aged women or older women. Thus, this study was to be an exploratory study to investigate clothing behavior of elderly female consumers and search apprel niche-market for them. The questionnaire consists of questions on brand images, fashion leadership, and merchandise assortment. The subjects were to evaluate their brand images and rated on 5 point Likert-type scales of 29 adjectives. The fashion leadership of these brands was evaluated by the degree of fashion trends adopted on 7 aspects including fashion images, silhouettes, fabrics, colors, design details, accessories, and item-coordinations. For the survey, both interview and the subjects were 66 manufacturers which have national brands or designer brands. Among 44 respondents, 30 respondents were designers and the rest of them were merchandiser or shop managers. The SPSS PC+ package was used to calculate frequency, T-test, and cluster analysis. The results from survey of manufacturers targeting middle-aged women or older women are as follow: 1) The brand imges which they pursue are prestigious, practical, and elegance. 2) There were significant differences in brand images, and national brand manufacturers pursue stronger images in prestigious, chic, intelligent, competency, than designer brand manufacturers. 3) 40 brands were divided into two clusters. 36 brands were included in one cluster, and only 4 brand were belong to the other cluster. In this market, the image of feminity was grouped with the image of prestigious, chic, intelligent, competency. 4) In product planning, the adption level of fashion trends in 7 aspects was generally at medium level, but fashion trends were more adopted in fabric, color, and item-coordination.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.87-104
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• 2015

Purpose: To assess real-world treatment patterns, health care utilization, costs, and survival among Medicare enrollees with locally advanced/unresectable or metastatic gastric cancer receiving standard first-line chemotherapy. Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results-Medicare linked database (2000~2009). The inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) first diagnosed with locally advanced/unresectable or metastatic gastric cancer between July 1, 2000 and December 31, 2007 (first diagnosis defined the index date); (2) ${\geq}65$ years of age at index; (3) continuously enrolled in Medicare Part A and B from 6 months before index through the end of follow-up, defined by death or the database end date (December 31, 2009), whichever occurred first; and (4) received first-line treatment with fluoropyrimidine and/or a platinum chemotherapy agent. Results: In total, 2,583 patients met the inclusion criteria. The mean age at index was $74.8{\pm}6.0years$. Over 90% of patients died during follow-up, with a median survival of 361 days for the overall post-index period and 167 days for the period after the completion of first-line chemotherapy. The mean total gastric cancer-related cost per patient over the entire post-index follow-up period was United States dollar (USD) $70,808{\pm}56,620$. Following the completion of first-line chemotherapy, patients receiving further cancer-directed treatment had USD 25,216 additional disease-related costs versus patients receiving supportive care only (P<0.001). Conclusions: The economic burden of advanced gastric cancer is substantial. Extrapolating based on published incidence estimates and staging distributions, the estimated total disease-related lifetime cost to Medicare for the roughly 22,200 patients expected to be diagnosed with this disease in 2014 approaches USD 300 millions.

• Journal of Korean Clinical Nursing Research
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.275-284
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• 2019

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the current state of home health nursing (HHN) for elders and to provide basic data on policy alternatives for establishing home medical care in the advanced general hospital. Methods: This study was conducted as a secondary data analysis, using electronic medical record (EMR) data of older patients who received HHN more than once from the S advanced general hospital between January 2016 and December 2018. Results: A total of 1,790 patients received HHN visits, with 22,477 visits being made. The mean age was 76.8±7.3 years old, 96.0% of elders had health insurance and 24.6% had orthopedics problems. Of the 1,168 people who visited emergency rooms, the most frequent symptom was pain (23.4%) and all patients visited the hospital at least once and at most 163 times outpatient care during HHN. Causative diseases were degenerative knee joint osteoarthritis (0.6%), surgery for right knee replacement (4.0%), and for dressings (9.7%) in the HHN service content analysis. Conclusion: The progress towards an aging society and the introduction of community care are expected to further enhance the need for HHN which should be able to provide comprehensive and continuous visiting health care services to the older patients. The results of this study are expected to help doctors solve problems not solved by HHN, reduce unnecessary emergency room or outpatient visits, and readmission, while at the same time contributing to the improvement of patient quality of life through efficient patient health care.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.84 no.3
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• pp.188-199
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• 2021

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common chronic respiratory disease with increased prevalence in the elderly. Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequences found at the end of the chromosome, which progressively shorten as cells divide. Telomere length is known to be a molecular marker of aging. This study aimed to assess the relationship between telomere length and the risk of COPD, lung function, respiratory symptoms, and emphysema index in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in Dusty Areas (CODA) cohort. Methods: We extracted DNA from the peripheral blood samples of 446 participants, including 285 COPD patients and 161 control participants. We measured absolute telomere length using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. All participants underwent spirometry and quantitative computed tomography scan. Questionnaires assessing respiratory symptoms and the COPD Assessment Test was filled by all the participants. Results: The mean age of participants at the baseline visit was 72.5±7.1 years. Males accounted for 72% (321 participants) of the all participants. The mean telomere length was lower in the COPD group compared to the non-COPD group (COPD, 16.81±13.90 kb; non-COPD, 21.97±14.43 kb). In COPD patients, 112 (75.7%) were distributed as tertile 1 (shortest), 91 (61.1%) as tertile 2 and 82 (55%) as tertile 3 (longest). We did not find significant associations between telomere length and lung function, exacerbation, airway wall thickness, and emphysema index after adjusting for sex, age, and smoking status. Conclusion: In this study, the relationship between various COPD phenotypes and telomere length was analyzed, but no significant statistical associations were shown.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.439-448
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• 2022

This study aims to search for education-related datasets provided by public data portals and examine what data types are constructed through classification using topic modeling methods. Regarding the data of the public data portal, 3,072 cases of file data in the education field were collected based on the classification system. Text mining analysis was performed using the LDA-based topic modeling method with stopword processing and data pre-processing for each dataset. Program information and student-supporting notifications were usually provided in the pre-classified dataset for education from the data portal. On the other hand, the characteristics of educational programs and supporting information for the disabled, parents, the elderly, and children through the perspective of lifelong education were generally indicated in the dataset collected by searching for education. The results of data analysis through this study show that providing sufficient educational information through the public data portal would be better to help the students' data science-based decision-making and problem-solving skills.

• Physical Therapy Rehabilitation Science
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.400-408
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• 2022

Objective: The purpose of this study is to compare EMG activity during horticulture motion and upper limb rehabilitation motion, to confirm whether horticulture motion is suitable for upper extremity rehabilitation of hemiparesis. Design: Three-group cross-sectional design. Methods: The 45 subjects were divided into three groups: hemiparesis (n=15), elderly (n=15) and healthy (n=15). We have recorded EMG signals of six upper limb muscles Upper trapezius (UT), Middle deltoid (MD), Anterior deltoid (AD), Biceps brachii (BB), Triceps brachii (TB), Brachioradialis (BR) during horticultural motions and three upper limb rehabilitative motions. The dependent variables were peak EMG, integral EMG, co-contraction ratio. A two-way repeated measures ANOVA was used to compare the horticultural motion and rehabilitation motion of the three groups. Results: The peak EMG was significantly different in MD, AD, BB, TB according to the motion(p<0.05), and the UT, BB were significant differences according to the group(p<0.05). The integral EMG was significantly different in MD, AD, BB, TB, BR according to the motion(p<0.05), and the BB were significant differences according to the group(p<0.05). The co-contraction ratio was significantly different in TB/BB according of the motion, and there was no difference between the groups. Conclusions: As a result of this study, horticultural motion alone was insufficient for upper arm rehabilitation, and horticultural motion alone was insufficient to induce continuous activity of the forearm.

• 한국노년학
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.1377-1392
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to understand the meaning and essence of leisure activities experienced by older females in rural communities and, in reference to that, to provide basic data to help develop health-promoting nursing intervention programs by investigating the indications of leisure and its effects on older individuals' life process. The qualitative research method of van Manen's Hermeneutical analysis and Phenomenological research are useful to study the true meaning and nature of experiences inherited from their language, belief, culture and social traditions. Consequently, the leisure that the women from the rural community were found to have experienced came down to a total of seven themes or activities: (a) to overcome loneliness through social interaction and get-togethers; (b) to achieve balance between body and mind by engaging in physical activities; (c) to try and help ease the burden on one's children; (d) to simply kill time; (e) to find oneself small pleasures; (f) to learn something new and feel proud; and (g) to live one's life as maintaining communication with the outside world. The study herein confirmed that the female elderly in rural area spend their free time on appreciating the nature, maintaining health and social interaction and hanging around with the peers of similar age to overcome economic woes and the feeling of estrangement unique in the social and economic context of rural communities.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.65-72
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• 2024

Objectives: Protecting people against financial hardship caused by illness stands as a fundamental obligation within healthcare systems and constitutes a pivotal component in achieving universal health coverage. The objective of this study was to analyze the prevalence and determinants of catastrophic health expenditures (CHE) in Iran, over the period of 2013 to 2019. Methods: Data were obtained from 7 annual national surveys conducted between 2013 and 2019 on the income and expenditures of Iranian households. The prevalence of CHE was determined using a threshold of 40% of household capacity to pay for healthcare. A binary logistic regression model was used to identify the determinants influencing CHE. Results: The prevalence of CHE increased from 3.60% in 2013 to 3.95% in 2019. In all the years analyzed, the extent of CHE occurrence among rural populations exceeded that of urban populations. Living in an urban area, having a higher wealth index, possessing health insurance coverage, and having employed family members, an employed household head, and a literate household head are all associated with a reduced likelihood of CHE (p<0.05). Conversely, the use of dental, outpatient, and inpatient care, and the presence of elderly members in the household, are associated with an increased probability of facing CHE (p<0.05). Conclusions: Throughout the study period, CHE consistently exceeded the 1% threshold designated in the national development plan. Continuous monitoring of CHE and its determinants at both household and health system levels is essential for the implementation of effective strategies aimed at enhancing financial protection.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.223-234
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• 2016

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to investigate accident cases involving electronic assistive devices, to determine how these accidents can be avoided and to devise preventative instructions for the handicapped who use these devices. Methods : This study was carried out from July 20 to October 3, 2015. A consent-based survey was conducted via mail and mobile phones targeting 700 electronic assistive device users, of which questionnaires from 290 users were collected and used in the analysis. Results : Accidents involving electronic assistive devices were investigated, especially the causes of the accidents and accident prevention education, as well as the status of the electronic assistive devices. The most common accident types were collision and falling, and it was found that the victims of the accidents usually suffered severe injury to their lower limbs. Most users used electronic assistive devices every day but rarely wore a safety belt because of discomfort. There were more incidents of collision and falling for older aged handicapped users, and the injury rate to the lower limbs was highest in handicapped elderly aged 50 years or older. Conclusions : In order to prevent accidents with electronic assistive devices in the future, a or management organizations must prepare specific safety guidelines and manage these accidents.