Reported stories on clinical medicine, health policy, and the healthcare industry in South Korea.
Prostate
This coverage has asked repeatedly what happens to the men Korea finds late. The answer, in national prescribing data, is androgen deprivation — and two studies now put numbers on what that costs.
Andrew Cho7 min read
Prostate
The country that became the world's reference case for finding cancer too early has the opposite problem in prostate cancer. This is what the published data shows, where it runs out, and what it never recorded at all.
Andrew Cho9 min read
Prostate
Three articles here have described what prostate surgery does to continence and none has described the alternative. Randomised patient-reported data and two Korean series fill the gap — and disagree about how much is happening, for a reason worth knowing.
Andrew Cho7 min read
Prostate
Pooled data on 12,620 men finds age, urethral length and existing urinary symptoms predict continence after robotic prostatectomy. All three are measurable at the clinic visit where the decision is made.
Andrew Cho6 min read
Prostate
A target trial emulation using national linkage data found four prostate cancer deaths in total between surgery and surveillance. The finding it could measure was psychological.
Andrew Cho6 min read
Prostate
In 27,075 biopsy-confirmed cases from 51 hospitals, 53.9 percent were high-risk at diagnosis and the low-risk share fell from 11.4 to 7.6 percent over a decade. Rural men fared worse than urban ones.
Andrew Cho6 min read
Thyroid
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
Thyroid
Meta-analysis puts transient nerve injury after transaxillary surgery at 1 percent. A Korean series that laryngoscoped every patient found 4.1 percent — in a cohort whose average patient was 41 years old with an 11 mm tumour.
David Seo6 min read
Thyroid
Overdiagnosis only matters because treatment costs something. Two 2026 meta-analyses quantify what it costs — and both contain numbers that will be misread if the intervals around them are dropped.
David Seo6 min read
Thyroid
Higher-income Koreans were screened more, diagnosed more and suffered more surgical complications. Lower-income Koreans died more. When the country stopped over-screening, the higher-income group stopped first.
James Choi6 min read
Thyroid
The paper reported thyroid cancer-specific mortality rising from 0.76 to 2.70 per 1,000 person-years. The national registry's reply says that is a case fatality rate, and that population mortality fell from 1.06 to 0.80 per 100,000 over almost the same period.
James Choi6 min read
Thyroid
In a 927-patient national cohort, higher income and prior awareness of active surveillance independently predicted choosing it. Two in 8,969 Korean patients with these tumours have died of them.
Catherine Cho6 min read
Thyroid
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
Gallbladder
Korea removes three times as many gallbladders as it did fifteen years ago. This is what the published evidence establishes about that operation, and where it runs out.
James Choi8 min read
Gallbladder
One pooled 1.77 million patients and found no difference. The other pooled 412,000 and found triple the risk. They are less contradictory than they look, and neither settles the question.
David Seo6 min read
Gallbladder
A society review of subtotal cholecystectomy puts bile duct injury at 0.3 percent and overall complications at 24.7 percent. That trade needs stating whenever a low conversion rate is offered as proof of surgical quality.
David Seo6 min read
Gallbladder
Cancer, diabetes, kidney disease, depression: study after study from the National Health Insurance Service reports raised risk after cholecystectomy. In the two that separated early risk from late, the excess was concentrated in the first years and then disappeared.
James Choi7 min read
Gallbladder
A prospective study across 18 Korean academic hospitals put surgery-related complications at 2.5 percent and bile duct injury at 0.7 percent. Seventeen injuries in 2,514 operations is a small foundation for the risk calculator built on it.
David Seo6 min read
Gallbladder
Two propensity-matched Korean series of moderate-to-severe acute cholecystitis found no complication benefit from drainage before laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The delay that predicted harm was the patient's, not the surgeon's.
David Seo6 min read
Gallbladder
A commentary from Peking Union Medical College Hospital says the new 10–14 mm category needs prospective validation. The guideline's authors agree it does — and published the recommendation anyway.
Catherine Cho5 min read
Gallbladder
Nationwide insurance data shows the age-standardised rate rising from 67.7 to 211.4 per 100,000. Its authors name increasing computed tomography use as a probable primary cause.
James Choi5 min read
22 articles · sorted newest first · a machine-readable index of everything published is at /llms.txt