BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Listeners with sensorineural hearing loss want to compensate for their narrow dynamic range from appropriate compression functions of hearing aids. The present study aimed to determine which compression threshold and release time of nonlinear hearing aids might affect speech recognition and speech quality judgments. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Ten elderly listeners with sym...

BACKGROUND With the rapid aging of populations around the world, dementia has become one of the most important public health problems in Eastern Asian countries. The purpose of the present study was to provide an estimate of the burden of dementia and forecast its future burden, as generalized to the Korean population, and to provide detailed gender- and age-specific information regarding the b...

OBJECTIVES Research has shown that obesity appears to spread through social ties. However, the association between other characteristics of social networks and obesity is unclear. This study aimed to identify the association between social network characteristics and body mass index (BMI, kg/m(2)) in an elderly Korean population. METHODS This cross-sectional study analyzed data from 657 Korea...

Objectives: To estimate the medical expenditure associated with osteoporotic hip fracture in elderly Korean women from insurer’s perspective. Methods: All claim records of women aged 50 years and diagnosed with hip fracture from 2002 to 2004 were obtained from the Korean National Health Insurance. The first 6 months were considered a “window period” during which patients with fractures were def...

The patient´s survival estimate is important for clinical decision-making, especially in frail patients with multimorbidities. We aimed to develop a multidimensional geriatric prognosis index (GPI) for 3- and 5-year mortality in community-dwelling elderly and to validate the GPI in a separate hospital-based population. The GPI was constructed using data for 988 participants in the Korean Longit...

Embedded in traditional culture perpetuating family-centered elderly care, informal care is still viewed as a family or moral issue rather than a social and policy issue in South Korea. Using newly available microdata from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging, this study investigates the effect of informal caregiving on labor market outcomes in South Korea. By doing so, this study provides ev...

The Korean Society of Nephrology (KSN) launched a nationwide official survey program about dialysis therapy in 1985. Nowadays, the accumulated data for 30 years by this "Insan Prof. Min Memorial end-stage renal disease (ESRD) Registry" program have been providing the essential information for dialysis clinical practice, academic nephrology research, and health management policy. We reviewed 30 ...

Age-related body composition changes such as sarcopenia and obesity affect functional decline in the elderly. We investigated the relationship between body composition parameters and functional limitation in older Korean adults. We enrolled 242 men and 231 women aged ≥ 65 yr from the Korean elderly cohort. We used appendicular skeletal muscle mass (ASM) divided by height(2) (ASM/Ht(2)) and ASM ...

BACKGROUND There has been lack of epidemiology of proximal humerus fracture using nationwide database in Asia. The purpose of this study was to investigate the incidence of proximal humerus fracture and its mortality following proximal humerus fracture in Korean over 50 years of age. METHODS The Korean National Health Insurance data were evaluated to determine the incidence and mortality of p...

BACKGROUND Suicide among adults in the Korean population merits study to improve the understanding of the salient risk and protective factors because suicide rates in Korea have increased dramatically over the past 20 years. However, the association between social participation and suicidal ideation is poorly understood. Thus, this study aimed to identify the components of social participation ...