ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Recently, there has been a trend that cigarette smoking rate in Asian and Africa adults has increased while the age group to start smoking has decreased gradually. This study aimed to investigate the relationships between lifetime smoking and hypertension, diabetes, obesity, waist measure, fasting blood pressure and food consumption, in order to look into health status depending on smoking status in Koreans. METHODS: Totally, 1075 men and 697 women with no disease participated in this study, in which one-way ANOVA was conducted by using SPSS version 18.0 for statistical process. The level of statistical significance was 0.05. RESULTS: As a result of analysis on relationship between lifetime smoking and hypertension, obesity and diabetes, statistically significant differences were revealed.Lifetime smoking was found to be significantly associated with increased waist measure, higher level of fasting blood sugar, and more ingestion of nutrients (carbohydrate, fat, and protein). CONCLUSION: Increased amount of lifetime cigarette smoking was shown to negatively influence various health factors, which might become to be a drive to cause diseases. Therefore, method to improve health factors must be sought for via education and campaign to control an amount of cigarette smoking in Korean adults.
ABSTRACT
STUDY DESIGN: This is a retrospective case-control study. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the influence of medication-related bleeding tendency on the clinical outcomes and complications of transforaminal epidural steroid injection (TFESI). SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: TFESI may result in serious complications such as epidural hematoma or adhesions in patients with medication-related bleeding tendency. However, little is known about the true relationship between medication-related bleeding tendency and postprocedural complications. METHODS: Retrospective review of the medical records of patients who had TFESI from 2010 to 2014 was done. Commonly used medications such as warfarin, heparin, aspirin, clopidogrel, and Opalmon (limaprost alfadex) were included as medications associated with bleeding tendency. Patients were divided into 3 groups and the treatment outcomes for each group were compared: The first group used medications associated with bleeding tendency, but discontinued them in due time before the procedure (discontinued group). The second group used medications associated with bleeding tendency and continued receiving medication (continuing group). The third group did not use any medications associated with a bleeding tendency (nonmedicated group). RESULTS: Among 2,469 patients, 1,234 were in the discontinued group, 408 patients in the continuing group, and 827 patients in the nonmedicated group. There were no statistically significant differences between groups for the treatment outcomes such as the degree of pain relief, duration of improvement, and complication rates including symptomatic epidural hematoma. Moreover, for the discontinued group and continuing group, the treatment outcomes were compared among patients with same medication, and revealed no differences. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated that continued use of medications associated with bleeding tendency does not increase epidural hematoma or symptomatic exacerbation, and thus should not be considered as a contraindication for TFESI. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level 3.
