FAQ · Screening
I've had a hysterectomy. Do I still need cervical cancer screening?
Usually not — and in Korea, women aged 30 to 44 who have had the operation are screened more often than women who have not.
Chloe Moon5 min read
Chloe Moon문수정
Reporter
Medical Insights Korea
Chloe Moon reports on internal medicine in South Korea for Medical Insights Korea, working from published studies and official health data.
- Covers
- Internal medicine · Thyroid · Screening · Korean health system · Urinary Tract Infection · Haemorrhoids · Cancer screening
- Record
- 21 written
- Contact
- fullmoon9289@gmail.com
Written by Chloe Moon
News · Urinary Tract Infection
The diabetes drug that puts sugar in the urine did not raise urinary infection rates in 27,128 Koreans
A hazard ratio of 0.874, and a confidence interval running from 0.585 to 1.309. That interval is the reason this is reassurance rather than proof.
Chloe Moon6 min read
FAQ · Haemorrhoids
I read that haemorrhoids are linked to dementia and heart failure. Should I be worried?
The studies are real and large. What they found is a marker, not a cause — and the researchers who published them say so themselves.
Chloe Moon5 min read
FAQ · Obesity
Can the weight-loss injection cause depression or anxiety?
Korean records from 13 hospitals found a psychiatric signal for both semaglutide and liraglutide. Whether the drug causes it, or the people who seek it were already more distressed, the data cannot say.
Chloe Moon5 min read
News · Obesity
After weight-loss surgery Koreans were 1.8 times as likely to stop their long-term gout drug. The attack medication did not follow
3,804 operated patients against 15,240 matched controls. Urate-lowering therapy fell to control levels by month 13; acute medication use fell too, and stayed above controls throughout.
Chloe Moon6 min read
News · Overactive Bladder
Older Koreans on overactive bladder medication carried 15 times the anticholinergic burden, and two-thirds of it came from the bladder drug itself
A cumulative cognitive burden score of 320.1 against 21.0 over 100 days. Mirabegron contributed exactly none of it, which is the practical finding.
Chloe Moon6 min read
FAQ · Varicose Veins
My varicose veins don't hurt. Can I just leave them alone?
The argument for treating rests on symptoms, so having none is the weakest case for a procedure. The mortality figure sometimes quoted against that is real, observational, and not Korean.
Chloe Moon5 min read
News · Haemorrhoids
Haemorrhoids came with a 7 percent higher rate of heart failure in 356,033 Koreans. Among those treated, the direction reversed
Over a median 13.3 years the hazard ratio was 1.073. In the group that had surgery or treatment it was 0.941 — and that second interval touches 1, which is the part worth being careful about.
Chloe Moon6 min read
News · Urinary Tract Infection
Hotter summer days brought more emergency admissions for urinary tract infection in Korea, and diabetes sharpened the effect
4,436 emergency visits across fourteen summers. A 20 percent rise in temperature carried an odds ratio of 1.06 overall — and 1.14 in people with diabetes.
Chloe Moon6 min read
FAQ · Urinary Tract Infection
I seem to get cystitis every summer. Is that a real pattern?
It is, and Korean national data measures how strong it is. The effect is small in general and largest in people with diabetes.
Chloe Moon4 min read
FAQ · Overactive Bladder
I've heard bladder medication can cause dementia. Is that true?
The concern attaches to one class of bladder drug, not all of them. In older Koreans, that class accounted for two-thirds of their entire anticholinergic exposure — and the alternative contributes none.
Chloe Moon5 min read
News · Varicose Veins
One Korean nurse in six had varicose veins on ultrasound. Standing four hours a day nearly tripled the odds
Most studies of standing work and varicose veins ask people whether they have them. This one scanned 414 nurses instead, which is why its answer carries more weight than its size suggests.
Chloe Moon6 min read
News · Screening
Six months or twelve? Korea's liver cancer surveillance data separate the two intervals
Among 64,674 Korean patients who developed hepatocellular carcinoma, 51.9 percent of those screened at six-month intervals received curative treatment. Among those never screened, 34.5 percent did.
Chloe Moon7 min read
News · Screening
Korea's stool test cuts colorectal cancer death — between 50 and 74. Past 80 the association reverses
In a cohort of 5.9 million Koreans, ever being screened carried an odds ratio of 0.74 for colorectal cancer death. The authors report the opposite result in the oldest group, and recommend an upper age limit.
Chloe Moon6 min read
FAQ · Thyroid
Will I have to take medication for life after thyroid surgery?
After a total thyroidectomy, yes. After removing half a thyroid — the operation chosen partly to avoid this — nearly half of patients ended up on levothyroxine within a year anyway.
Chloe Moon6 min read
News · Kidney Stones
Two diabetes drug classes, two different stone risks. Korean national data put the gap at about half
In 117,006 matched pairs from the National Health Insurance Service, patients starting an SGLT2 inhibitor had a nephrolithiasis rate of 0.65 per 100 person-years against 1.12 on a DPP-4 inhibitor. The relative benefit was larger in people who had never had a stone; the absolute benefit was larger in those who had.
Chloe Moon7 min read
News · Screening
One national programme offered two gastric cancer tests. Only one of them changed who died
In 16.6 million Koreans, upper endoscopy carried an odds ratio of 0.53 for gastric cancer death. The barium series offered alongside it carried 0.98. The gap widened with every repeat endoscopy.
Chloe Moon7 min read
FAQ · Thyroid
A Korean health checkup found a thyroid nodule. What does that mean?
About three in ten asymptomatic adults have one. Korea scanned enough people to find them at scale and produced the world's largest cancer detection epidemic without moving the death rate.
Chloe Moon6 min read
News · Thyroid
Thyroid cancer in South Korea: what the evidence says about the epidemic, the correction, and what it cost
Korea found more thyroid cancer than any country in history and almost none of the extra deaths that would justify it. This is what the published evidence establishes, and where it stops.
Chloe Moon8 min read
FAQ · Thyroid
Did thyroid cancer screening in South Korea save lives?
It multiplied diagnoses. The published evidence is that the great majority of those diagnoses were of cancers that would never have caused harm.
Chloe Moon4 min read
News · Thyroid
Korea's thyroid cancer epidemic was supposed to be over. The incidence curve turned back up in 2015
National registry data has the standardised rate falling from 75.06 to 42.50 per 100,000 in three years, then climbing to 60.13 by 2021. The renewed rise includes distant-stage disease, which overdetection does not produce.
Chloe Moon6 min read