• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.143-163
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• 2017

Purpose: This study was a systematic review and meta-analysis designed to investigate effects of psychoeducational intervention for cancer survivors. Methods: Ten databases were searched. Two reviewers independently performed the selection of the studies, data extraction and assessment. The risk of bias was assessed using Cochrane Collaboration's tool. To estimate the effect size, meta-analysis of the studies was performed using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis and RevMan programs. Results: Of 18,781 publications identified, 35 met inclusion criteria, and 25 studies were used to estimate effect size of psychoeducational intervention. Effect sizes (standardized mean difference [SMD]) were heterogeneous and random effects models were used in the analyses. Psychoeducational intervention was effective for quality of life (n=2,410, ES=0.23; 95% CI: 0.09~0.37), coping and self-efficacy (n=179, ES=0.68; 95% CI: 0.26~1.11), anxiety (n=1,786, ES=-0.26; 95% CI: -0.37~-0.15), depression (n=1,910, ES=-0.28; 95% CI: -0.37~-0.18), and psychological distress (n=2,242, ES=-0.31; 95% CI: -0.46~-0.17). Subgroup analysis showed that counseling was the most effective intervention for quality of life, and behavioral therapy was an effective intervention for all positive and negative outcomes. Publication bias was not detected except for psychological distress. Conclusion: Psychoeducational intervention appears to be effective in improving quality of life and coping and self-efficacy, and it is effective in reducing psychological symptoms in cancer survivors. Behavioral therapy, especially, is commonly effective in improving psychosocial outcomes. However, low-quality evidence, variability in the designs of existing studies, and publication bias suggest that additional high-quality trials should be conducted in the future.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.2361-2368
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• 2015

Objective: To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) in differentiating between benign and malignant enlarged lymph nodes using meta-analysis. Materials and Methods: Pubmed, Embase, SCI and Cochrane databases were searched for studies (up to September 1, 2014) reporting the diagnostic performance of CEUS in discriminating between benign and malignant lymph nodes. Inclusion criteria were: prospective study; histopathology as the reference standard; and sufficient data to construct $2{\times}2$ contingency tables. Methodological quality was assessed using Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2 (QUADAS-2). Patient clinical characteristics, sensitivity and specificity were extracted. The summary receiver operating characteristic curve was used to examine the accuracy of CEUS. A meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the clinical utility in identification of benign and malignant lymph nodes. Sensitivity analysis was performed after omitting outliers identified in a bivariate boxplot and publication bias was assessed with Egger testing. Results: The pooled sensitivity, specificity and AUROC were 0.92 (95%CI, 0.85-0.96), 0.91 (95%CI, 0.82-0.95) and 0.97 (95%CI, 0.95-0.98), respectively. After omitting 3 outlier studies, heterogeneity decreased. Sensitivity analysis demonstrated no disproportionate influences of individual studies. Publication bias was not significant. Conclusions: CEUS is a promising diagnostic modality in differentiating between benign and malignant lymph nodes and can potentially reduce unnecessary fine-needle aspiration biopsies of benign nodes.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.108-115
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• 2011

This study investigates the construction management selection methods for fair competition within the construction management market by analyzing the current status of domestic construction management, the 2010 publication on the status of construction management, and the construction management evaluation criteria. Also, the 2009 publication of top CM service establishments, the average proportion of tender for 120 CM services from 2002 to 2010, and six assessment results which are open to the parties directly involved were statistically analyzed to review the adequacy of the evaluation criteria. This analysis shows that the evaluation criteria for the CM service impedes the development of the construction management industry and companies, since the criteria are decided by the service payment, and the technical skills assessed by technical proposals have no ties with contract prices. Therefore, this study proposes an improvement of the selection methods in accordance with the project characteristics and the technical requirements. However, more research is still needed to derive a detailed classification method of the technical requirement, the owner's evaluation criteria selection, and the preparation of an institutional foundation for the construction manager's post-evaluation.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.14
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• pp.5939-5944
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• 2015

Background: There is still a great deal of controversy with regard to the prognostic role of chemotherapy-induced amenorrhea (CIA) in breast cancer patients. To confirm whether CIA can serve as a useful factor in predicting clinical effects of systemic adjuvant chemotherapy, we performed this meta-analysis. Materials and Methods: Relevant studies were identified using PubMed, and Embase databases. Eligible study results were pooled and summary hazard ratios (HRs) with corresponding confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. Subgroup analyses and an assessment of publication bias were also conducted. Results: A total of 8,333 patients from 11 published studies were identified through searching the databases. The pooled HRs for disease-free survival (DFS) suggested that CIA was associated with a significant reduction in the risk of recurrence, especially in patients with hormone receptor-positive lesions (overall HR=0.65, 95%CI 0.53-0.80, $I^2=41.3%$). When the five studies reporting the HR for overall survival (OS) were pooled (n=4193), a favorable trend was found (HR=0.69, 95%CI 0.52-0.91, $I^2=51.6%$). No publication bias was observed in this study. Conclusions: This meta-analysis suggests that CIA predicts a better outcome in premenopausal hormone receptor-positive breast cancer patients.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.3253-3258
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• 2012

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT) plus chemotherapy versus WBRT alone for treating brain metastases (BM) from lung cancer by performing a meta-analysis based on randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Methods: The PubMed, Embase, CENTRAL, ASCO, ESMO, CBM, CNKI, and VIP databases were searched for relevant RCTs performed between January 2000 and March 2012. After quality assessment and data extraction, the meta-analysis was performed using the RevMan 5.1 software, with funnel plot evaluation of publication bias. Results: 19 RCTs involving 1,343 patients were included. The meta-analyses demonstrated that compared to WBRT alone, WBRT plus chemotherapy was more effective with regard to the objective response rate (OR = 2.30, 95% CI = 1.79 - 2.98; P < 0.001); however, the incidences of gastrointestinal reactions (RR = 3.82, 95% CI = 2.33 - 6.28, P <0.001), bone marrow suppression (RR = 5.49, 95% CI = 3.65 - 8.25, P < 0.001), thrombocytopenia (RR = 5.83, 95% CI = 0.39 - 86.59; P = 0.20), leukopenia (RR = 3.13, 95% CI = 1.77 - 5.51; P < 0.001), and neutropenia (RR = 2.75, 95% CI = 1.61 - 4.68; P < 0.001) in patients treated with WBRT plus chemotherapy were higher than with WBRT alone. There was no obvious publication bias detected. Conclusion: WBRT plus chemotherapy can obviously improve total efficacy rate, butalso increases the incidence of adverse reactions compared to WBRT alone. From the limitations of this study, more large-scale, high-quality RCTs are suggested for further verification.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.10-18
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• 2013

Objectives: We investigated the association between particulate matter less than $10{\mu}m$ in aerodynamic diameter ($PM_{10}$) exposure and non-accidental mortality in Asian populations by meta-analysis, using both time-series and case-crossover analysis. Methods: Among the 819 published studies searched from PubMed and EMBASE using key words related to $PM_{10}$ exposure and non-accidental mortality in Asian countries, 8 time-series and 4 case-crossover studies were selected for meta-analysis after exclusion by selection criteria. We obtained the relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of non-accidental mortality per $10{\mu}g/m^3$ increase of daily $PM_{10}$ from each study. We used Q statistics to test the heterogeneity of the results among the different studies and evaluated for publication bias using Begg funnel plot and Egger test. Results: Testing for heterogeneity showed significance (p<0.001); thus, we applied a random-effects model. RR (95% CI) per $10{\mu}g/m^3$ increase of daily $PM_{10}$ for both the time-series and case-crossover studies combined, time-series studies relative risk only, and case-crossover studies only, were 1.0047 (1.0033 to 1.0062), 1.0057 (1.0029 to 1.0086), and 1.0027 (1.0010 to 1.0043), respectively. The non-significant Egger test suggested that this analysis was not likely to have a publication bias. Conclusions: We found a significant positive association between $PM_{10}$ exposure and non-accidental mortality among Asian populations. Continued investigations are encouraged to contribute to the health impact assessment and public health management of air pollution in Asian countries.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.37-52
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• 2022

Purpose : The purpose of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the effects of electrical stimulation on patients with non-specific low back pain. Methods : Domestic databases were gathered from studies that conducted clinical trials associated with electrical stimulation and its impact on pain of non-specific low back patients. A total of 681 studies were identified, with 12 studies satisfying the inclusion data. The studies consisted of patient, intervention, comparison, outcome, and study design (PICO-SD). The search outcomes were items associated with low back pain. Cochrane risk of bias 2 (RoB 2) was used to evaluate the quality of 12 randomized controlled trials. Effect sizes (Hedges's g) in this study were computed as the corrected standard mean difference (SMD). A random-effect model was used to analyze the effect size because of the high heterogeneity among the studies. Egger's regression and 'trim-and-fill' tests were carried out to analyze the publication bias. Cumulative meta-analysis and sensitivity analysis were conducted to analyze the effect according to the sample size and the consistency of the effect size. Results : The following factors had a large overall effect size (Hedges's g=1.28, 95 % CI=.20~2.36) involving electrical stimulation on non-specific low back pain. The subgroup analysis all showed a statistical difference in the types of study design, electrical stimulation, and assessment tool. No statistically significant difference was found in the meta-regression analysis. Publican bias was found in the data. Conclusion : The findings in this study indicate that electrical stimulation interventions have a positive effect on patients with non-specific low back pain. However, due to the low quality of studies and publication bias, the results of our study should be interpreted cautiously.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.448-464
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• 2012

Objectives : This study reviews the latest articles in Korea and other countries that studied oriental medicine treatment on poststroke depression. Methods : Korean articles were retrieved from the 9 major Korean web article search engines. Foreign articles were retrieved from PubMed. Article published date was from 2000 up to September 2012. There were no restrictions on the types of publication, but articles not available in full text were excluded. The methodological quality was assessed according to Cochrane's assessment of risk of bias and Newcastle-Ottawa quality assessment scale. Results : Twenty-two articles were included in this study. Eleven articles were published in Korea, the rest were published in China. Nine articles were randomized controlled trials (RCT), one article was a non-randomized study (NRS), four articles were case reports, three articles were cross-sectional studies, two articles were comparative studies. In RCT articles, risk of selection bias and performance bias were generally high, risk of detection bias was unclear. The NRS article took four stars in Newcastle-Ottawa quality assessment. Comparison Hamilton rating scale for depression score between oriental medicine treated group and western medicine treated group revealed that there was no remarkable difference in mean score changes after treatment on PSD. Conclusions : The results of this study suggest that oriental medicine treatment is as effective as western medicine treatment for PSD. In the future, more rigorous oriental medicine treatment studies should be conducted.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.549-559
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• 2015

This study aimed to find the problems of evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine and seek the future development direction by evaluating the quality of oriental medicine related systematic review(SR) studies using AMSTAR tool. The 26 SR studies related to oriental medicine were searched from the database of DBPIA, OASIS, and KISS, and they were evaluated on the basis of AMSTAR. The average of AMSTAR for the quality assessment of SR studies was 6.0 point, and the 26 studies included 2 high quality studies (7.7 %), 21 normal quality studies (80.8 %), and 3 low quality studies (11.5 %). The quality of studies was not correlated with the publication years. The quality of oriental medicine related SR studies need to be improved steadily. Furthermore, continued efforts to promote the evidence-based practice in the field of Oriental Medicine will help to establish foundation for the convergence approach in the healthcare sector.

• Journal of Radiation Industry
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.277-285
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• 2018

Patients administered radioisotope for medical purposes are regulated by each country to quarantine them until their body's radioactivity contents decrease below release criteria. To predict the quarantine period and provide it to medical staffs and patients, it is necessary to approach the assessment of the exposure dose of persons due to patients in a realistic manner. For this purpose, a whole-body effective half-life should be applied to the dose assessment equation instead of the physical half-life. In this study, we constructed a bio-kinetic model for each nuclear species based on the ICRP publication to obtain a whole-body effective half-life of 10 unsealed gamma-ray emitting nuclei from the notification of Nuclear Safety and Security Commission, and calculated the effective half-life mathematically by simulating the distribution of the radioisotope administered in the whole body as well as each organ scale. The whole-body effective half-life of $^{198}Au$, $^{67}Ga$, $^{123}I$, $^{111}In$, $^{186}Re$, $^{99m}Tc$, and $^{201}TI$ were 1,93, 2.57, 0.295, 2.805, 1.561, 0.245, and 2.397 days respectively. However, it was found to be undesirable to offer a single value of the effective half-life of $^{125}I$, $^{131}I$, and $^{169}Yb$ because the changes in the effective half-life show no linearity. A bio-kinetic model created for the internal exposure assessment has been shown to be possible to calculate the effective half-life of radioisotopes administered in the patient's body, but subsequent studies of radiolabeled compounds are required as well.