Introduction: Consumers are advised to read the nutrition labeling when purchasing packaged food. To what extent consumers read nutrition labeling and understand what they read is not well established among Malaysian older persons. Methods: Data from the National Health and Morbidity Survey III (NHMS III) undertaken in 2006 was analysed to determine the use and understanding of nutrition labeling and its associated factors among free living elderly men and women aged >60 years. Descriptive analysis and binary Logistic Regression were used to analyse the data. Results: A total of 4,898 respondents provided self-reported information on their use and understanding of nutrition labeling when they bought or received food. Use of nutrition labeling was higher among elderly men [61.9% (95% CI: 59.6-64.1)] than for women [36.6% (95% CI: 34.5-38.8)]. Nutrition labeling use was significantly associated with age, formal education, higher household income levels and marital status among both elderly men and women. Understanding of nutrition labeling among elderly men and women was 91.8% (95% CI: 90.1-93.2) and 89.7% (95% CI: 87.4- 91.7) respectively and was significantly associated with formal education for both elderly men and women. Conclusion: Overall, the reading of nutrition labeling among Malaysian elderly is moderate. Elderly men and women with formal education were more likely to understand nutrition labeling. The importance of reading nutrition labels should be inculcated in consumers including older persons so that they choose foods that are nutritious and safe.

Diabetes mellitus is an important cardiovascular risk factor. The objective of this study was to provide population-based estimates on the prevalence, awareness, treatment and control rate of diabetes among the older persons in Malaysia. Analysis of secondary data from a cross-sectional national population-based survey was done, which was conducted in 2011 throughout Malaysia. A total of 2764 respondents (15.5%) were older persons. The overall prevalence of diabetes among older persons was 34.4% in which 65.2% were aware of their diabetes status. Out of those who were aware, 87.5% had been treated. Only 21.8% of those treated had their diabetes controlled. The results of multiple logistic regression showed that the factors associated with higher awareness rates were women, Indians and higher income groups; factors associated with higher treatment rates were urban residents and those who were married and widow/widower/ divorcee. There was a high overall prevalence, awareness and treatment rate of diabetes among older persons in Malaysia but with suboptimal control rate.
Diabetes Mellitus ; Aged ; prevention & control ; Therapeutics

Occupational dermatosis is one of the most prevalent occupational disorders. However, the extent of the occupational dermatoses including incidences and prevalencies of each disease entity, and etiologic materials are not yet well stated in Korea. Authors reviewed the literatures on the statistic data and reports on the occupational dermatoses, and surveyed on the occupational dermatoses in two factories, and surveyed the physicians responsible to the occupational dermatoses with formed questionnaire. The results are as follows; 1. Among medical journals published since 1964, there were 31 articles on the occupational dermatoses. Of 31 articles, 18 were case reports and all others were review articles. Of 18 case reports, 9 were epidemiologic survey. The Workers' Periodic Health Examinations revealed that prevalence of the occupational dermatoses was highest(4.36 per 10,000 workers) in 1974, but number of the cases reported were decreased sharply since 1978 with some tendency to increase since 1987. There were 2,240 reported cases of occupational dermatoses between 1966 and 1992, which is 1.90% of all the reported occupational diseases. Skin infection and injuries due to chemicals were most frequent and there were 6 cases of skin cancer. 2. In an epidemiological survey on the dermatoses among 995 workers in a metal product manufacturing factory and 225 workers with acne, 130 workers with scar, 123 workers with deformity of toe nails. Scars, photosensitivity dermatitis, deformity of finger and toe nails, and acne were more prevalent in the metal product manufacturing factory(p<0.05). In the metal product manufacturing factory, workers treating organic solvents and oils had more dermatoses than those without treating the materials(p<0.05). On the skin patch performed on 16 workers in the metal product manufacturing factory, there were 8 cases of irritation dermatitis and 5 cases of contact dermatitis. Prevalence of contact dermatitis in the metal product manufacturing factory was 1.3%. 3. On the questionnaire survey, 34 dermatologists, 29 doctors of preventive medicine, and 22 family physician replied. The proportion of occupational etiology among all dermatoses assumed by the physicians were below 9%, and the most important occupational dermatosis in Korea was contact dermatitis. Main etiologic materials related to the occupational dermatosis were organic solvent, acid and alkali, and metals. The reason for the scarcity of report of occupational dermatoses were difficulty in diagnosis and physician's ignorance of the occupational etiology. They replied that to prevent the occupational dermatosis in the workplace, the use of protective devices was most important, and development of diagnostic criteria on the occupational dermatoses is urgent. Above results shows us that there is many workers with occupational dermatoses, but they are mostly unreported. Measures to prevent and manage the occupational dermatoses are not satisfactory at present. Hence, authors suggest measures for the precises diagnosis, report and prevention of the occupational dermatoses. a. Dernatikigustm orevebtuve physician, and industrial hygienist should work as a team to examine the high risk group and establish the preventive measures. b. Disease entities, diagnostic criteria of occupational dermatoses should be listed, criteria for the compensation and job fitting at recruitment should be established, and manual for the proper treatment and effective prevention of each occupational dermatosis should be developed. c. Patch test antigens against each occupational category should be developed and it should be available to any physicians responsible. d. To facilitate the diagnosis of occupational dermatoses by the doctors responsible for the Workers' Periodic Health Examination, development of standardized questionnaire, education on the techniques of the patch test, and cooperation with the dermatologist in diagnosis of occupational dermatoses is essential.
Acne Vulgaris ; Alkalies ; Cicatrix ; Compensation and Redress ; Congenital Abnormalities ; Dermatitis ; Dermatitis, Contact ; Diagnosis ; Education ; Fingers ; Humans ; Incidence ; Korea ; Metals ; Occupational Diseases ; Oils ; Patch Tests ; Physicians, Family ; Prevalence ; Preventive Medicine ; Protective Devices ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Skin ; Skin Diseases* ; Skin Neoplasms ; Solvents ; Toes

PURPOSE: Many kinds of substances are produced on vascular endothelial activation. The aim of this study is to confirm an increase in Endothelin-1 (ET-1), the most potent vasoconstrictor, which is produced by endothelial activation, in patients with chronic anal fissure and to infer the relationship between ET-1 and anal fissure chronicity. METHODS: The study groups are divided into three different groups with 30 subjects each. Group 1 is comprised of healthy volunteers, group 2 of chronic anal fissure patients, and Group 3 of patients with higher than 3rd degree hemorrhoids. Blood samples were taken to measure the ET-1 levels in subject's serum and to compare the results with those for the control groups. RESULTS: Among the 90 subjects, 38 were male, and 52 were female. The average age was 36.8. The average ET-1 level marked 1.47 +/- 0.78 pg/mL for male subjects and 1.16 +/- 0.47 pg/mL for female subjects (P = 0.02). The average ET-1 level in the patient groups is as follow: 1.21 +/- 0.44 pg/mL in group 1, 1.46 +/- 0.83 pg/mL in group 2, and 1.20 +/- 0.56 pg/mL in group 3 (P = 0.14). CONCLUSION: Group 2, the chronic anal fissure patient group, showed a higher ET-1 level than groups 1 and 3, the control group and the hemorrhoid patient group, but this difference had no statistical significance.
Endothelin-1 ; Endothelium ; Female ; Fissure in Ano ; Hemorrhoids ; Humans ; Ischemia ; Male

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether longer compression time before firing the stapler reduced the postoperative complications related to staple line formation in stapled hemorrhoidopexy. Methods: This retrospective case-control study was conducted at a colorectal-anal specialty hospital. Consecutive patients with grades III and IV hemorrhoids who underwent stapled hemorrhoidopexy between January 2016 and November 2019 were included. According to the compression time, patients were assigned to the long compression time group (2 minutes) or the typical compression time group (30 seconds). The primary outcome measure was incidence of staple line complications such as dehiscence, bleeding, and stenosis. Results: A total of 348 patients treated with stapled hemorrhoidopexy were evaluated. Seventy-three and 275 patients were included in the long compression time group and the typical compression time group, respectively. No significant differences were observed in patient characteristics between the groups. However, additional procedures were performed more frequently in the typical compression time group (78.1% vs. 92.0%, P=0.001). Bleeding occurred more frequently in the typical compression time group (1.4% vs. 8.4%, P=0.030). The rates of dehiscence and stenosis were not significantly different between the groups. Fecal urgency developed more frequently in the typical compression time group (0% vs. 5.1%, P=0.040). In logistic regression analysis, typical compression time (30 seconds) was the only risk factor for bleeding (odds ratio, 8.496; P=0.040). Conclusion Longer compression time was associated with a decreased incidence of postoperative bleeding after stapled hemorrhoidopexy.

During the last 30 years, major organ transplantation has become popular, even in Korea, such as kidney, liver, etc. After the successful clinical cardiac transplantation in Korea, many cases of cardiac transplantation are being performed in some centers. But lung transplantation has a lot of obstacles, especially donor shortage and decreased tolerability of the lung to ischemia-reperfusion injury. Usually it was considered that the maximum safety margin of ischemic time in lung transplantation was about 4 to 6 hours. So, many investigators have tried to develop better preservation methods and experimental model for evaluation of effectiveness in those various methods. But most of those methods had several drawbacks in clinical and experimental settings. So we developed an easily-controllable, reliable, and inexpensive experimental model of isolated rabbit lung block. Using these model, we evaluated its effectiveness and reliability for the experiment of ischemia-reperfusion injury in lung transplantation.
Heart Transplantation ; Humans ; Ischemia* ; Kidney ; Korea ; Liver ; Lung Transplantation ; Lung* ; Models, Theoretical* ; Organ Transplantation ; Reperfusion Injury ; Research Personnel ; Tissue Donors ; Transplantation ; Transplants

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate early outcomes of ALTA (aluminum potassium sulfate and tannic acid, Ziohn(R)) injection compared with those of a submucosal hemorrhoidectomy for the treatment of internal hemorrhoids. METHODS: From September 2008 to April 2009, a total of 50 patients who had internal hemorrhoids (Golliger grade II to IV) were treated by using either ALTA injection (n=25) or a submucosal hemorrhoidectomy (n=25). Outcomes with respect to pain scores, analgesics use, and satisfaction levels of the patients, and complications were compared. RESULTS: The mean number of hemorrhoidal piles was 3.52 in the ALTA injection group and 3.56 in the operation group. The average amount of ALTA injection was 27.34 cc. Pain scores measured at one day and 7 days after the treatment, and the number of analgesics used in the injection group were significantly lower than those in the operation group (P<0.001). However, there was no significant difference in the satisfaction level between two groups. One case of treatment failure was found in the ALTA injection group. There was no difference in complications between the injection group (n=4) and the operation group (n=5) (P=0.725). CONCLUSION: When compared with a submucosal hemorrhoidectomy, ALTA injection showed less post-treatment pain and less analgesics use. Overall complication rates were not different between the two groups. We found the early outcomes of ALTA injection for the treatment of internal hemorrhoids to be comparable to those of surgery. Thus, large-scale and long-term follow-up studies are needed to clarify the proper indications for ALTA injection.
Analgesics ; Follow-Up Studies ; Hemorrhoidectomy ; Hemorrhoids ; Humans ; Potassium ; Sclerotherapy ; Sulfates ; Tannins ; Treatment Failure

An application of the multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT) for cardiac imaging is the non-invasive CT angiographic assessment of the cardiac morphology and the coronary arteries. The most important application is for the non-invasive diagnosis of coronary artery disease, and this includes assessment of coronary artery anomaly and stenosis, the evaluation of non-calcified atherosclerotic plaque and the follow-up examinations after stent deployment and bypass surgery. In the study, we have illustrated a variety of diseases of the coronay artery by using MDCT. These may facilitate the understanding of MDCT features of coronary artery lesions.
Arteries ; Constriction, Pathologic ; Coronary Angiography* ; Coronary Artery Disease ; Coronary Vessels ; Diagnosis ; Follow-Up Studies ; Multidetector Computed Tomography* ; Plaque, Atherosclerotic ; Stents

This epidemiologic study was carried out to investigate cause and magnitude of food-poisoning like epidemic occurred among inhabitants of a village who have eaten dead cow's meat near Kyonng in February of 1994, around lunar new year. The investigation consisted of interview survey on all inhabitants of 77 households (l11 males and 119 females) and their visitors (40 males and 35 females), skin test with anthraxinum(Russian product), study on clinical characteristics for the patients hospitalized, and microbiologic examination on microbes isolated from cow's meat, patient and soils of dead cow's barn. The results obtained are as followings; 1. The proportion of the inhabitants who ingested the dead cow's meat was 36.4%. The incidence rate of the disease was 65.1% for males, 41.7% for females and the cases were distributed evenly for all age groups. The group ingested raw meat showed higher incidence than the group ingested cooked meat. There was no case among people who did not eat the meat. 2. The most clinical symptoms were significantly more frequent among cases than non-cases; sore throat (57%), nausea (51%), fever(47%), indigestion(43%), cough(41%), anorekia(41%), abdominal distention(41%), and abdominal pain(39%) were the major symptoms among cases. 3. Among 29 cases hospitalized out of total 61 cases, three patients, all old and feeble persons, deceased from the disease resulting in 4.9% fatality rate among total patient and 10.3% among hospitalized. Septicemia and meningitis were the causes of the deaths. 4. Three strains isolated from patients, and three strains from dead cow's meat and soil revealed typical microbiologic characteristics of Bacillus Anthracis, which also proved to be fatal to experimentally infected mice.
Animals ; Anthrax* ; Bacillus anthracis ; Eating* ; Epidemiologic Studies ; Family Characteristics ; Female ; Gyeongsangbuk-do* ; Humans ; Incidence ; Male ; Meat* ; Meningitis ; Mice ; Nausea ; Pharyngitis ; Sepsis ; Skin Tests ; Soil

Angiosarcoma is the most common primary intracardiac malignancy, but many published papers have reported it to be rather rare. The prognosis of angiosarcoma is known to be very poor, and the treatment of choice has been surgery until recently, but many centers currently tend to try multimodal therapies, including chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In this report, we present a rare case in which an intracardiac angiosarcoma could have threatened the patient's life in short time by the rapid progression of the tumor, which caused right atrial rupture.
Heart Rupture ; Hemangiosarcoma ; Prognosis ; Rupture ; Sarcoma