PURPOSE: To present clinical and histological features of prepubertal testicular tumors through the analysis of the long-term experiences of a single surgeon. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The charts of 48 children treated for testicular tumors from 1986 to 2010 were retrospectively reviewed. All patients underwent radical orchiectomy. The patients' ages, clinical presentations, histopathological findings, kinetics of tumor markers, and outcomes were recorded. RESULTS: The patients' median age at the initial diagnosis was 19.5 months (range, 3 to 84 months). All patients presented with either a palpable mass (76%) or scrotal size discrepancy (24%). Compared with a palpable mass, scrotal size discrepancy led to delay in diagnosis by 5 months. Regarding histology, yolk sac tumors and teratomas accounted for 53% and 36% of the tumors, respectively. The mean preoperative alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) level was significantly higher in patients with yolk sac tumors than in those with teratomas (4,600 ng/mL vs. 6.3 ng/mL), and only one patient with a teratoma had a preoperative AFP value higher than 20 ng/mL. Following radical orchiectomy, 72%, 8%, and 16% of patients with a yolk sac tumor showed normalization, persistent elevation, and relapse after transient lowering of AFP, respectively. Preoperative AFP was greater in patients with non-normalization than in those with normalization. Five of six patients with non-normalization showed evidence of either vascular invasion or endolymphatic tumor emboli. CONCLUSIONS: We found a higher number of yolk sac tumors than teratomas in patients with prepubertal testicular tumors. AFP was the most useful marker in the diagnosis and follow-up of childhood yolk sac tumors. Relapsed yolk sac tumors often showed pathological evidence of aggressiveness.
Adolescent ; alpha-Fetoproteins ; Child ; Child, Preschool ; Endodermal Sinus Tumor ; Follow-Up Studies ; Humans ; Kinetics ; Orchiectomy ; Race Relations ; Recurrence ; Retrospective Studies ; Teratoma ; Testicular Neoplasms ; Biomarkers, Tumor

We report the case of a 29-year-old mixed-race woman suffering from recurrent major depressive episodes, with suicidal ideation and risk, involving several inpatient admissions. A comorbid diagnosis of borderline personality disorder was also recorded in one of her previous inpatient admissions. During her last inpatient admission, a multidisciplinary case discussion and review of the patient's life highlighted several possible intercultural trigger factors that could have contributed to the exacerbation of her psychiatric illness. We emphasise the need to explore intercultural predisposing and precipitating factors for a more complete psychodynamic understanding of psychiatric illnesses among the multiracial population of Singapore. This also adds to the discussion on the management of such patients with the option of formal in-depth psychotherapy in adjunct to medication. This may prevent recurrent relapses, modify suicide intent and reduce the necessity for inpatient treatment, which will be cost-effective and result in efficacious treatment.
Adult ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Borderline Personality Disorder ; epidemiology ; psychology ; Comorbidity ; Cultural Characteristics ; Depressive Disorder, Major ; epidemiology ; psychology ; Ethnic Groups ; Female ; Humans ; Psychotherapy ; methods ; Race Relations ; Religion ; Risk ; Singapore ; Suicidal Ideation

PURPOSE: No study had been conducted to assess the hospitals' environment for learning purposes in multicenter sites in Saudi Arabia. It aims to evaluate the environment of hospitals for learning purposes of pediatric residents. METHODS: We applied Postgraduate Hospital Educational Environment Measure (PHEEM) to measure the learning environment at six teaching hospitals in the Eastern Region of Saudi Arabia from September to December 2013. RESULTS: The number of respondents was 104 (86.7%) out of 120 residents and 37 females and 67 male residents have responded. The residents' response scored 100 out of 160 maximum score in rating of PHEEM that showed overall learning environment is favorable for training. There were some items in the social support domain suggesting improvements. There was no significant difference between male and female residents. There was a difference among the participant teaching hospitals (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: The result pointed an overall positive rating. Individual item scores suggested that their social life during residency could be uninspiring. They have the low satisfactory level and they feel racism, and sexual discrimination. Therefore, there is still a room for improvement.
Surveys and Questionnaires ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Female ; Hospitals, Teaching ; Humans ; Internship and Residency* ; Learning ; Male ; Pediatrics ; Racism ; Saudi Arabia*

In this study, we investigated how empathic neural responses unfold over time in different empathy networks when viewing same-race and other-race individuals in dynamic painful conditions. We recorded magnetoencephalography signals from Chinese adults when viewing video clips showing a dynamic painful (or non-painful) stimulation to Asian and White models' faces to trigger painful (or neutral) expressions. We found that perceived dynamic pain in Asian models modulated neural activities in the visual cortex at 100 ms-200 ms, in the orbitofrontal and subgenual anterior cingulate cortices at 150 ms-200 ms, in the anterior cingulate cortex around 250 ms-350 ms, and in the temporoparietal junction and middle temporal gyrus around 600 ms after video onset. Perceived dynamic pain in White models modulated activities in the visual, anterior cingulate, and primary sensory cortices after 500 ms. Our findings unraveled earlier dynamic activities in multiple neural circuits in response to same-race (vs other-race) individuals in dynamic painful situations.
Adult ; Humans ; Brain Mapping ; Pain ; Empathy ; Racism ; Gyrus Cinguli/physiology* ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Brain/physiology*

PURPOSE: The goal of this study was to examine the association between perceived racial discrimination and substance use and the potential moderating effect of perceived parental affection between the two variables. METHODS: A total of 101 Korean American adolescents participated in this cross-sectional study utilized an online survey. Descriptive statistics were used to describe for means and frequencies and the patterns of substance use. Logistic regression analysis was also used to examine the association between perceived discrimination and substance use. RESULTS: Ninety percent of the participants reported perceiving racial discrimination, and 21% had used at least one kind of substance in the month prior to taking the survey. The most frequently used substance was alcohol, followed by marijuana and tobacco products. Logistic regression analysis revealed a link between perceived racial discrimination and substance use (OR = 1.74, 95% CI = 1.01, 3.00). However, parental affection did not moderate between racial discrimination and substance use. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that perceived racial discrimination is positively associated with substance use among Korean American adolescents, and health care providers, counselors, and school nurses should screen for discrimination-related stress and substance use in this population.
Adolescent* ; Asian Americans* ; Cannabis ; Counseling ; Cross-Sectional Studies ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Health Personnel ; Humans ; Logistic Models ; Parents ; Racism* ; Tobacco Products

This article attempts to illuminate the ways in which Kudo's medical knowledge based on 'gynecological science' constructed the cultural 'traditions' of colonial Korea. Kudo appears to have been quite an influential figure in colonial Korea in that his writings on the relationship between women's crime, gynecological science and the Choson society granted a significant amount of intellectual authority. Here, I examine Kudo's position within colonial Korea as a producer and propagator of medical knowledge, and then see how women's bodies were understood according to his gynecological knowledge. It also traces the ways in which Kudo's gynecological knowledge represents Choson society and in turn invents the 'traditions' of Chosn. Kudo's knowledge of "gynecology" which had been formed while it traveled the states such as Japan, Germany and France served as an important reference for his representation of colonial Korean society. Kudo was a proponent of biological evolution, particularly the rules of 'atavism' put forth by the criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso, and argued that an unique social environment caused 'alteration of sexual urges' and primitive cruelty in Choson women. According to Kudo, The social environment was none other than the practice of 'early marriage,' which went against the physiology of women. To Kudo, 'early marriage' was an old 'tradition' of Choson and the cause of heinous crimes, as well as an unmistakable indicator of both the primitiveness and savageness of Chosn. While Lombroso considered personal factors such as stress as the cause of women's crimes, Kudo saw Choson women's crimes as a national characteristic. Moreover, he compared the occurrence rate of husband murders by provinces, based on which he categorized the northern population of Choson as barbaric Manchurian and the southern population as the superior Japanese, a combination of racism and scientific knowledge. Kudo's writings provide an insight into the appropriation of Western medical theories and criminal anthropological knowledge by a non-Western colony as well as the ambivalence and contradictions underlying Japanese empire as in the use of concepts like 'difference' and 'unity.' According to today's standards, Kudo's physiological arguments can hardly avoid being called pseudo science, which confirms that the power and authority of science standing on 'objectivity' and 'universality' are actually dependent on social contexts that are constantly being readjusted. In the end, the cultural 'traditions' of a nation/state often taken for granted are social constructions born out of transnational crossing points of knowledges, and on the basis of these constructs are the concepts of differences between nations/states. And one of the core references for these differences in colonial Korea was Western science/medical knowledge.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Biological Evolution ; Crime ; Criminals ; Female ; Financing, Organized ; France ; Germany ; Gynecology ; Homicide ; Humans ; Japan ; Korea ; Racism ; Social Environment ; Spouses

This paper attempts to explore implications of Colonial medicine's Blood Type Studies, concerning the characteristics and tasks of racism in the Japanese Colonial Empire. Especially, it focuses on the Blood Group Anthropology Studies at Keijo Imperial University Department of Forensic Medicine. In Colonial Korea, the main stream of Blood Type Studies were Blood Group Anthropology Studies, which place Korean people who was inferior to Japanese people in the geography of the race on the one hand, but on the other, put Koreans as a missing link between the Mongolian and the Japanese for fulfillment of the Japanese colonialism, that is, assimilationist ideology. Then, Compared to the Western medicine and Metropole medicine of Japan, How differentiated was this tendency of Colonial Medicine from them? In this paper, main issues of Blood Group Anthropology Studies and its colonial implications are examined.
Aluminum Hydroxide ; Anthropology ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Carbonates ; Colonialism ; Continental Population Groups ; Forensic Medicine ; Geography ; Hand ; Humans ; Hypogonadism ; Japan ; Korea ; Mitochondrial Diseases ; Ophthalmoplegia ; Racism ; Rivers

PURPOSE: The findings of various studies and policy reports on marriage change, international marriage migrant women and its issues are presented in this study. METHOD: Research objectives were accomplished by conducting a literature review. The main areas of the literature review included married migrant women, its challenges, and current policies for international marriage migrant women. RESULT: Women migrating through international marriage are known to face various difficulties due to their migration. Some important obstacles women migrants face in the Republic of Korea are cultural differences in daily lifestyle, language, food, health care services, cultural assumptions, gender structure, family relationships, expected roles within family, interpersonal relationships and more. The plights of married migrant women include commercialization of international marriage, false information regarding the spouse, family abuse, insecure nationality, economic difficulty and unemployment, racial prejudice, and cultural maladjustment. Current support policies for migrant women living in Korea are suggested. CONCLUSION: This study concluded with policy implications and recommendations for future study. In addition, the author suggests the necessity of programs and policies for the improvement of married migrant women's well-being based on women's health and family nursing dimensions.
Ethnic Groups ; Family Nursing ; Family Relations ; Female ; Food, Organic ; Humans ; Korea ; Life Style ; Marriage ; Racism ; Republic of Korea ; Spouses ; Transients and Migrants ; Unemployment ; Women's Health

This study investigates beyond the bifurcated myth of the medical migration of Korean women to Germany in the 1970s, which is known as the “German dispatchment” myth from the Korean perspective and the “development aid” discourse from that of the Germans, by focusing on the newly-released documents from the German Hospital Federation (Deutsche Krankenhausgesellschaft, DKG). The migration was essentially a transfer of labor from a weak to a strong state, and the disparity of state strength characterized the nature of the recruitment mechanism. Both Korea and Germany have romanticized the labor transfer and appropriated the collective experiences of migrants for their own political purposes. In this transnational business, the Korean Overseas Development Corporation (KODCO) and the DKG maintained exclusivity in the labor migration channel and were faithful to their own interests. The DKG, as a representative of the German healthcare industry, was concerned about being criticized for destroying the healthcare system of developing countries by stealing their skilled workforce. They, therefore, tried to influence publicity in Korea and Germany to persuade the people that the recruitment benefited both countries. However, the DKG was aware of the deceitfulness of its “development aid” discourse. The Korean government, which advanced the labor export for the sake of obtaining foreign currency, romanticized it as patriotism and used the term “German dispatchment.” However, the incapacity and corruption of KODCO as an agency from the Korean perspective resulted in criticism regarding its recruitment program. The DKG complained that the selection of incapable personnel coupled with corruption was causing unforeseen financial damage to its member hospitals. Nevertheless, it officially defended its partner for the sake of its own interests, such as avoiding bad publicity and securing the sustainability of the recruitment program. The conflicts regarding nursing tasks and working conditions between Korean nurses and their German colleagues and employers captured in the documents of the DKG trace the origin of the issues in relation to cultural misunderstanding and pervasive racism. The disparity of state strength between the two countries resulted in the subaltern position of Korean female healthcare workers in the global labor market, and they tried to bring forth the best possible outcome while working in a foreign country in unfamiliar circumstances. However, the difficulties with female guest workers from Asia were generally credited to their inability to adhere to the German working style. This study contributes to the existing scholarship on this topic by filling the gaps. Historical research on the medical migration of Korean nurses and nurse-aides to West Germany has relied on limited historical sources. In 2013, the National Archives of Korea transferred official documents regarding these workers that were produced and archived by the DKG, which represented the interests of German healthcare institutions. Its documents on Korean nursing personnel provide supplementary information and display findings in different perspectives. They do not bring forth completely new findings that have never been researched before but are still valuable for delivering concrete evidence on the circumstances of that time, which were previously merely inferred.
Asia ; Commerce ; Delivery of Health Care ; Developing Countries ; Emigration and Immigration ; Fellowships and Scholarships ; Female* ; Germany* ; Health Care Sector ; Humans ; Korea ; Nursing ; Racism ; Theft ; Transients and Migrants

OBJECTIVES: In South Korea (hereafter Korea), the number of adolescent offspring of immigrants has rapidly increased since the early 1990s, mainly due to international marriage. This research sought to examine the association between the experience of school violence and mental health outcomes, and the role of help-seeking behaviors in the association, among biethnic adolescents in Korea. METHODS: We analyzed cross-sectional data of 3627 biethnic adolescents in Korea from the 2012 National Survey of Multicultural Families. Based on the victim's help-seeking behavior, adolescents who experienced school violence were classified into three groups: 'seeking help' group; 'feeling nothing' group; 'not seeking help' group. Multivariate logistic regression was applied to examine the associations between the experience of school violence and depressive symptoms for males and females separately. RESULTS: In the gender-stratified analysis, school violence was associated with depressive symptoms in the 'not seeking help' (odds ratio [OR], 7.05; 95% confidence interval [CI], 3.76 to 13.23) and the 'seeking help' group (OR, 2.77; 95% CI, 1.73 to 4.44) among male adolescents after adjusting for potential confounders, including the nationality of the immigrant parent and Korean language fluency. Similar associations were observed in the female groups. However, in the 'feeling nothing' group, the association was only significant for males (OR, 8.34; 95% CI, 2.82 to 24.69), but not females (OR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.18 to 3.28). CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that experience of school violence is associated with depressive symptoms and that the role of victims' help-seeking behaviors in the association may differ by gender among biethnic adolescents in Korea.
Adolescent ; Bullying/*ethics ; Child ; Cross-Sectional Studies ; *Depression ; Emigrants and Immigrants ; Female ; *Help-Seeking Behavior ; Humans ; Interviews as Topic ; Logistic Models ; Male ; Minority Health/*ethics ; Odds Ratio ; Racism ; Republic of Korea ; Risk Factors ; Schools ; Sex Factors ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Young Adult