• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.17 no.7
• /
• pp.3611-3614
• /
• 2016

Background: Propolis based preparations have a wide range of applications in various specialties of dentistry. The aim of this clinical trial was to test the efficacy of propolis as a mouthwash in the reduction of chemotherapy induced oral mucositis (OM) in a single center. Materials and Methods: In this randomised, controlled study patients undergoing chemotherapy were included consecutively and randomised to an experimental group receiving propolis mouthwash (n = 20) and a control group receiving diluted water (n=20). Oral mucositis, erythema and eating and drink ability were assessed at baseline and after 3 and 7 days using the World Health Organization (WHO) scale and the oral mucositis assessment scale (OMAS). Results: There were significant differences in OM, wound and erythema in propolis group compared to placebo, but no significant difference in eating and drink ability. However, it was interesting that 65% of the patients in the propolis group were completely healed at day 7 of the trial. No significant adverse events were reported by the patients. Conclusions: This study found that oral care with propolis as mouthwash for patients undergoing chemotherapy is an effective intervention to improve oral health. Our findings shouldlencourage health practitioners to apply propolis mouth rinse for the oral care of patients under chemotherapy.

• Korean Parent-Child Health Journal
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.47-57
• /
• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to discover the nature from the life experience of a person with unilateral acquired blindness and his/her family after losing the eyesight and adapting in the environment and to find the meaning of life and how to solve the problem in psychosocial aspect. Methods: This study uses one of the qualitative research methods which explains how families with the unilateral acquired blind perceive blindness after experiencing it and observes how they signify it. starts with interest in lifestyles of individuals and their families and tries to understand the subjective existences of participants in accessible ways and draw the experiences after becoming one-side blind. It cyclically uses deductive verification process through inductive method and establishing hypothesis using materials. Results: According to the results of this study, unilateral acquired blindness studies, due to shattered life, they did not know what to do. Also, discomfort from struggling in a big tunnel and even will to live were found. trying to go out to the world, seeing the new world, and trying to encourage myself, strong attachment to life was shown to by saying, appeared. Each includes sub-topics such as feeling abandoned after confirmed the blindness, feeling disappointed to doctors, family, and friends, trying to live with hope, struggling in a tunnel with thinking how to live, closing the mind from the world, seeing outside the world in the midst of struggling, trying to forget the past with the will of life, having hope to live with care of family, and trying to keep the rest vision. Conclusion: Firstly, in nursing aspect for their adaptation, programs for disable people and nursing intervention focused on their families should be developed. Secondly, since it can be economic and psychological burden for their families and acquaintances, it is necessary to support the blind so that they can find fitted rehabilitation programs and come back to society. Thirdly, active participation of health care providers may influence social interest the improvement of national welfare policy for the unilateral acquired blind.

• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.73-83
• /
• 2008

The rapid change of the health and medical environment and the globalization of medicine has driven doctors to converge and analyse of new and up-to-date medical information and decide to what to make decision for diagnosis and treatments in clinical practice. Medical environment goes with the changes with social environment such as rapid increase of aging population, changes of disease pattern, formation of new area of experts except doctors, government intervention for the medical system, medical insurance of the charges of medical treatment, a increased desire for human rights. These trends should be adopted rapidly to the education system for the students of medical school. The learning objectives of the preventive medicine was developed in 1995 and underwent necessary revision of the contents to create the first revision in 2006. However, the required educational contents of health promotion and disease prevention have been changed by the new trends of medical education such as PBL and integrated curriculum and the 2006 revision does not satisfy these needs. We formed a task force which surveyed all the Western and Traditional Korean medical colleges to describe the state of preventive medicine education in Korea, analyzed the changing education demand according to the change of health environment and quantitatively measured the validity and usefulness of each learning objective in the previous curriculum. With these results, for the good education for preventive medicine, each Traditional Korean medicine schools need more preventive medicine faculties and teaching assistants and opening of some required subjects such as Yangsaeng and Qigong. And future studies of the learning process and ongoing development of teaching materials according to the new learning objectives should be undertaken with persistence in order to ensure the progress of preventive medicine education.

• Nutrition Research and Practice
• /
• v.12 no.6
• /
• pp.459-468
• /
• 2018

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: The Dietary Reference Intakes for Koreans (KDRIs), a set of reference intake values, have served as a basis for guiding a balanced diet that promotes health and prevents disease in the general Korean population. In the process of developing DRIs, a systematic review has played an important role in helping the DRI committees make evidence-based and transparent decisions for updating the next DRIs. Thus, the 2015 KDRI steering committee applied the systematic review framework to the revision process of the KDRIs. The purpose of this article is to summarize the revision process for the 2015 KDRIs by focusing on the systematic review framework. MATERIALS/METHODS: The methods used to develop the systematic review framework for 2015 KDRIs followed the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Tufts Evidence-based Practice Center. The framework for systematic review of the 2015 KDRIs comprised of the 3 following steps: (1) development of an analytic framework and refinement of key questions and search terms; (2) literature search and data extraction; and, (3) appraisal of the literature and summarizing the results. RESULTS: A total of 203,237 studies were retrieved through the above procedure, with 2,324 of these studies included in the analysis. General information, main results, comments of reviewers, and results of quality assessment were extracted and organized by study design. The average points of quality appraisals were 3.0 (range, 0-5) points for intervention, 6.1 (0-9) points for cohort, 6.0 (3-9) points for nested case-control, 5.4 (1-8) points for case-control, 14.6 (0-22) points for cross-sectional studies, and 7.0 (0-11) points for reviews. CONCLUSIONS: Systematic review helped to establish the 2015 KDRIs as a useful tool for evidence-based approach. Collaborative efforts to improve the framework for systematic review should be continued for future KDRIs.

• The Journal of Advanced Prosthodontics
• /
• v.15 no.6
• /
• pp.315-332
• /
• 2023

PURPOSE. This study aimed to investigate whether the accuracy of intraoral scanners is influenced by different scanning strategies in an in vitro setting, through a systematic review and meta-analysis. MATERIALS AND METHODS. This review was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA 2020 standard. The following PICOS approach was used: population, tooth impressions; intervention, the use of intraoral scanners with scanning strategies different from the manufacturer's instructions; control, the use of intraoral scanners following the manufacturers' requirements; outcome, accuracy of intraoral scanners; type of studies, in vitro. A comprehensive literature search was conducted across various databases including Embase, SciELO, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. The inclusion criteria were based on in vitro studies that reported the accuracy of digital impressions using intraoral scanners. Analysis was performed using Review Manager software (version 5.3.5; Cochrane Collaboration, Copenhagen, Denmark). Global comparisons were made using a standardized mean difference based on random-effect models, with a significance level of α = 0.05. RESULTS. The meta-analysis included 15 articles. Digital impression accuracy significantly improved under dry conditions (P < 0.001). Moreover, trueness and precision were enhanced when artificial landmarks were used (P ≤ 0.02) and when an S-shaped pattern was followed (P ≤ 0.01). However, the type of light used did not have a significant impact on the accuracy of the digital intraoral scanners (P ≥ 0.16). CONCLUSION. The accuracy of digital intraoral scanners can be enhanced by employing scanning processes using artificial landmarks and digital impressions under dry conditions.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.15
• /
• pp.6171-6176
• /
• 2014

Background: In order to design effective educational intervention for cancer survivors, it is necessary to identify most-trusted sources for health-related information and the amount of attention paid to each source. Objective: The objective of our study was to explore the sources of health information used by cancer survivors according to their access to the internet and levels of trust in and attention to those information sources. Materials and Methods: We analyzed sources of health information among cancer survivors using selected questions adapted from the 2012 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS). Results: Of 357 participants, 239 (67%) had internet access (online survivors) while 118 (33%) did not (offline survivors). Online survivors were younger (p<0.001), more educated (p<0.001), more non-Hispanic whites (p<0.001), had higher income (p<0.001), had more populated households (p<0.001) and better quality of life (p<0.001) compared to offline survivors. Prevalence of some disabilities was higher among offline survivors including serious difficulties with walking or climbing stairs (p<0.001), being blind or having severe visual impairment (p=0.001), problems with making decisions (p<0.001), doing errands alone (p=0.001) and dressing or bathing (p=0.001). After adjusting for socio-demographic status, cancer survivors who were non-Hispanic whites (OR= 3.49, p<0.01), younger (OR=4.10, p<0.01), more educated (OR= 2.29, p=0.02), with greater income (OR=4.43, p<0.01), and with very good to excellent quality of life (OR=2.60, p=0.01) had higher probability of having access to the internet, while those living in Midwest were less likely to have access (OR= 0.177, p<0.01). Doctors (95.5%) were the most and radio (27.8%) was the least trusted health related information source among all cancer survivors. Online survivors trusted internet much more compared to those without access (p<0.001) while offline cancer survivors trusted health-related information from religious groups and radio more than those with internet access (p<0.001 and p=0.008). Cancer survivors paid the most attention to health information on newsletters (63.8%) and internet (60.2%) and the least to radio (19.6%). More online survivors paid attention to internet than those without access (68.5% vs 39.1%, p<0.001) while more offline survivors paid attention to radio compared to those with access (26.8% vs 16.5%, p=0.03). Conclusions: Our findings emphasize the importance of improving the access and empowering the different sources of information. Considering that the internet and web technologies are continuing to develop, more attention should be paid to improve access to the internet, provide guidance and maintain the quality of accredited health information websites. Those without internet access should continue to receive health-related information via their most trusted sources.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.45-51
• /
• 2015

Background: The current study examined health-related quality of life (QoL) for patients with esophageal/gastric cardia precursor lesions or cancer before and after treatment to facilitate improved prevention and treatment. Materials and Methods: Patients with different stages of esophageal/gastric cardia lesions completed two QoL questionnaires, EORTC QLQ-C30 and supplemental QLQ-OES 18, before primary treatment, and at 1, 6 and 12 months after treatment. Results: Fifty-nine patients with precursor lesions, 57 with early stage cancer, and 43 with advanced cancer responded to our survey. Patients with precursor lesions or early stage cancer reported better QoL overall than those with advanced cancer before treatment (p<0.01). Global QoL scores before treatment and at 1 month after treatment were $71{\pm}9$ versus $69{\pm}9$ (p>0.01), $71{\pm}8$ versus $61{\pm}11$ (p<0.01), $67{\pm}11$ versus $62{\pm}9$ (p<0.01) for three stages of lesions. At 6 months after treatment, some QoL measures recovered gradually in precursor lesion and early cancer patients, while some continuously deteriorated in advanced cancer patients. At 12 months, all QoL scores were comparable to baseline for patients with precursor lesions (p>0.01), while global QoL, social, pain, and insomnia scores for early stage and advanced cancer were inferior to corresponding baseline levels (difference between means>5, p<0.01). At this time point, compared with patients with early stage cancer, those with advanced cancer showed worse QoL with all function and most symptom measures (p<0.01). Conclusions: Patients with precursor lesions or early stage esophageal/gastric cardia cancer show better QoL than those with advanced cancer. This indicates that screening, early diagnosis and treatment may improve the QoL for esophageal/gastric cardia cancer patients. Target intervention and counseling should be given by health care providers during treatment and follow-up to facilitate QoL improvement.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.19
• /
• pp.8461-8467
• /
• 2014

Background: In this study we investigated factors influencing cancer screening intention and behavior to develop measures to increase the rate of cancer screening in the Korean elderly. Materials and Methods: Participants included 425 elderly subjects 65 years of age or older from D city, South Korea. The health behavior characteristics and cancer screening-related and theory of planned behavior (TPB) factors influencing the participant attitudes on cancer screening were examined to identify determinants significantly affecting cancer screening intentions and behavior. Results: Predictive factors influencing cancer screening behavior included smoking, exercise, cancer concerns, preference for the type of cancer screening, prior experience with the National Cancer Screening Program, perception of the National Cancer Screening Program, behavioral control with respect to cancer screening and cancer screening intentions. The factors influencing cancer screening behavior were different from those for cancer screening intentions. Conclusions: Increasing the cancer screening intentions of the elderly is necessary to raise the rates of cancer screening. Additionally, identifying the inhibitory factors that serve as obstacles to cancer screening in the elderly and changing screening intentions into actual screening behavior is necessary. This study provides a reference for developing and applying policy measures and intervention strategies to increase the cancer screening rates of the elderly in Korea.

• The Journal of Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.297-307
• /
• 2004

This study aims to identify the types and type-specific characteristics of subjectivity on complementary alternative therapy of nursing students using Q-methodology and to provide them as basic materials for nursing education. Q-methodology provides a scientific method for identifying perception structures that exist within certain individuals or groups. Thirty C college nursing students' classified 35 selected Q-statements into 9 points standard, according to the level of agreement or disagreement by forced normal distribution. The collected data was analyzed by using a QUNAL PC program. Resultingly, the attitude of nursing students regarding complementary alternative therapy was divided into three types. Type 1 is positive recognition. The students who think the therapy contributes to maintaining and improving health, and is a way to protect human body and improve welfare by enhancing immunity. Type 2 is objective acceptance. The students who think the complementary alternative therapy is effective when it is properly used for specific constitutions in discussion with medical teams after its effects are scientifically reviewed. Type 3 is popularity consideration. The students who put focus on its popular use and regard the therapy as very useful for not only patients but also ordinary healthy people because it is based on the natural and human approach. In conclusion, proposed are studies on influence factor of nursing students' awareness about the complementary alternative therapy and reviews on the effects of the complementary alternative therapy that is applied as nursing intervention.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
• /
• v.55 no.5
• /
• pp.549-553
• /
• 2017

The information on mortality from echinococcosis is important not only for a better understanding of the severity of the disease, but also for evaluating the effectiveness of public health interventions. The aim of this research was to study the causes of mortality from echinococcosis. We have collected and analyzed the materials of 1,470 patients in 10 age - groups in the Republic of Armenia (from 2000 to 2016). To find out the causes of mortality from echinococcosis, we have analyzed the medical histories and protocols of postmortem examinations of 19 deaths from echinococcosis and 17 deaths due to other indirect causes not associated with the parasite. The average annual death rate from echinococcosis is 0.007 per 10,000 population, and the mortality is 1.29 (per 100 patients). The highest mortality occurs in people aged 70-79. Mortality from echinococcosis is also recorded among the unoperated children. The rupture of the parasitic cyst and hepatic insufficiency are major among the direct causes of mortality. Sometimes the hydatid cysts unrecognized during the life were first diagnosed at autopsy. Insufficient qualification of doctors in the field of helminthology, as well as the latent course of the disease or manifestation of minor symptoms in echinococcosis over a long period often led to medical errors. Further decline in mortality can be achieved by early diagnosis, timely hospitalization and treatment before the development of severe complications worsening the prognosis and outcomes of surgical intervention.