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Volume 15 (1); June 1993
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Original Articles
Smoking habits and the related characteristics of male students of a medical college in Seoul.
Kwang Ho Meng, Eui Chul Shin
Korean J Epidemiol. ;15(1):96-104.
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Abstract
Smoking habits and several selected characteristics of male students of a medical college surveyed to examine the status of smoking habits of male medical students and obtain the baseline information for future antismoking education in medical collge. Two hundred and sixty five randomly selected students were asked to enter the answers on a structured simple questionnair that included personal characteristics and variables related to their smoking habits. Major findings obtained from the study are as follows: 1. Smoking rate of male medical students was 54.0%. Those who had experience of failing the entrance examination showed statistically significant higher smoking rate (60.0%) than others. 2. More than half (57.3%) of the smoking students started their smoking after age of 20.44% of smoking premed students had smoked for less than 1 year and 63.0% were smoking less than 10 cigarettes a day. 3. 51.8% of smoking students stated that they started the smoking because of their friend’s recommendation and 44.0%, because of curiosity. 63.6% of smoking students had intention of quiting the smoking in the future. The intention was stronger as the graed increased. 4. 81.8% of smoking students agreed that smoking is harmful to health of their own and others as well. In fact, 73.4% of smoking students were worrying about their health because of their smoking habits. 5. 43.3% of currently non-smoking students stated that had experience of smoking and 13.9% of the non-smoking students stated that they might smoke in the future. This rate was much higher among ex-smokers than other. This study results suggests that prevalence of smoking among Korean male medical students is very much high compared to that in other coumtries, and the antismoking campaign in medical school should be focused on students in lower grades particularly on those in premedical course.
Summary
A study on the nondifferential misclassification-a mathematical approach for correcting the estimates-.
Chung Mo Nam, Hee Choul Ohrr
Korean J Epidemiol. ;15(1):85-95.
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Abstract
This study is conducted to suggest a method for correcting the biased estimates due to nondifferential misclassification of polytomous exposure and confounder. The basic idea for correcting the bias is a rearrangement of misclassified data structure using misclassification probability matrices. We present here a linear relationship between the misclassified and true date. Simulation studies were also tried to investigate the magnitude and direction of the bias mentioned above. In simulation studies, we focused on the misclassification patterns in three circumstances, misclassification of exposure, misclassification of confounder, and joint misclassification of both exposure and confounding variables. The simulation results show that the direction of exposure or confounder misclassification biases are heavily dependant on the misclassification patterns. The proposed mehod is applied to an empirical data on the presence of medical utilization and smoking history where corrected odds ratios are examplified considering plausible ranges of misclassification probaility patterns.
Summary
A case-control study on risk factors of five major cancers in adult Koreans.
Kwang Ho Meng
Korean J Epidemiol. ;15(1):59-73.
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AbstractAbstract PDF
Abstract
Unlike in the case of communicable infectious diseases, chronic non-infectious diseases such as cancer can not be controlled by eliminating one specific causative agent because the occurance of these diseases is usually associated with several risk factors. This is why epidemiological studies to identify the risk factors of disease are of great importance in the management of chronic non-infectious diseases and, in fact, many studies of this kinds, particularly for cancer, have been carried out in developed countries since 1960s. Unfortunately, however, there have been very few risk factor studies done so far in Korea. This study was planned to test the risk factors of five cancers such as stomach cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, and famale breast cancer and cervical cancer that had been hypothesized in studies of developed countries whether the risk factors were also significant in adult Koreans. Major findings obtained from this study are as follows : 1. Salty food and the family history of gastric disease death significantly increased the risk of stomach cancer. Adjusted odds ratios of these factors were 1.9 and 2.1 respectively. Those who had not have upper G-1 examinations had also significantly higher risk for stomach cancer than in referent group. 2. For liver cancer, several hypothetical risk factors showed significantly higher risks. They were HBsAg positivity, frequent alcohol intake, family history of liver disease deaths, and the past history of liver fluke infection. The adjusted odds ratio of HBsAg positivity for liver cancer was 23.5. 3. For lung cancer, only smoking was found to be significantly associated, and the adjusted odds ratio was 6.4. 4. Risk of cervical cancer was significantly higher among the women whose formal educational level was 6 years and below, and whose first age at marriage was 19 and lower. Higher parity was also significantly associated with cervical cancer. Those who had not experienced cervical examination had 2.5 times higher risk than those who had periodically had the examination. 5. History of benign breast disease, experience of breast feeding, and high fat diet significantly increased the risk of breast cancer. These study results suggest that much of the five major cancers among adult Koreans were also significantly associated with various bad health behaviors of the people, and this implies that the primary prevention measure of cancer such as health education has to be reinforced together with secondary prevention measure-screening for early diagnosis and treatment.
Summary
Trends of the cardiovascular disease studies in Korea.
Jong Ku Park
Korean J Epidemiol. ;15(1):47-55.
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AbstractAbstract PDF
Abstract
Cardiovascular disease is the major cause of death in industrialized countries including Korea. Therefore, there were many study endeavours to find out the risk factors of this disease in western countries. In western countries, most of the study subjects were ischemic heart disease in white. Therefore, it is needed to study cardiovascular diseases in nonwhite. In this situation, identifying the trends of the cardiovascular disease studies will be helpful to make a guideline of studying this disease in Korea. Materials are the papers published in Korea related with cardio vascular disease except whose study subjests are diagnosis or treatment of this disease. The results are as follows : 1. Most of the study subjects were hypertensions other than cerebrovascular diseases and ischemic heart diseases. 2. Among the several study methods, cross-sectional study was the most popular. This study suggests the necessity of activities in studying cerebrovascular diseases and ischemic heart diseases under the study designs of cohort study and experimental study.
Summary

Epidemiol Health : Epidemiology and Health