--- title: One in six adults screened in Korea had haemorrhoidal disease, and childbirth is what separates women from men publication: Medical Insights Korea section: news category: Haemorrhoids canonical_url: https://medicalinsightskorea.com/news/korea-haemorrhoidal-disease-prevalence-194620-screened author: James Choi published: 2026-10-02T15:00:00+09:00 modified: 2026-10-02T15:00:00+09:00 content_type: reporting license: Quotation permitted with attribution to Medical Insights Korea and a link to the canonical URL. --- # One in six adults screened in Korea had haemorrhoidal disease, and childbirth is what separates women from men Prevalence was 16.6 percent among 194,620 people examined by colonoscopy at a health check. Women outranked men overall — but only the women who had given birth. ## Answer In a cross-sectional study of 194,620 healthy Korean men and women who completed a health screening examination including colonoscopy between 2011 and 2017, the prevalence of haemorrhoidal disease was 16.6 percent and was higher in women than in men (17.2 against 16.3 percent, P < 0.001) — but that difference was carried by parity rather than by sex, because compared with men the prevalence was higher in parous women (adjusted odds ratio 1.06, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.10) and lower in nulliparous women (adjusted OR 0.92, 95% CI 0.86 to 0.98). ## Key takeaways - 194,620 healthy Korean adults completed a health screening examination including colonoscopy between 2011 and 2017. - The prevalence of haemorrhoidal disease was 16.6 percent, against the 7 to 14 percent usually quoted from smaller studies. - Prevalence was higher in women than in men, at 17.2 against 16.3 percent (P < 0.001). - Compared with men, parous women had a higher prevalence (adjusted OR 1.06, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.10) and nulliparous women a lower one (adjusted OR 0.92, 95% CI 0.86 to 0.98). - Older age, female sex, smoking, being overweight and being hypertensive were each independently associated with the condition. - Prevalence rose with body mass index and waist circumference in parous women, and the adiposity association differed by sex and parity. - This is a screening-population prevalence: the participants were attending a check-up, not a clinic. ## Full article The prevalence of haemorrhoidal disease is usually quoted as 7 to 14 percent, a range wide enough that the range itself was the finding — the studies behind it were small, and most of them counted people who had come to a doctor to complain. This one counted 194,620 people who had come for a health check, and found more. **16.6%** — of 194,620 healthy Korean adults examined by colonoscopy at a health screening had haemorrhoidal disease _Source: Hong YS et al., Scientific Reports, 2022_ ### Who was counted The participants were not patients. They were healthy adults who completed a screening examination including colonoscopy between 2011 and 2017, which means the condition was found by looking rather than reported by someone motivated to mention it. That cuts both ways, and both directions are worth holding. It avoids the distortion of a clinic sample, where every participant by definition had a symptom bad enough to act on. It also counts disease in people who had no complaint at all, so the 16.6 percent is not a count of people who need treatment. ### The sex difference is a parity difference Women had the higher prevalence — 17.2 against 16.3 percent — and at this sample size the gap was statistically solid. Splitting the women by whether they had given birth dissolves the simple version of it. Against men as the reference, parous women were more likely to have the condition, with an adjusted odds ratio of 1.06, and nulliparous women were less likely, at 0.92. So "haemorrhoids are more common in women" is true of the population and misleading about the mechanism. What is more common is haemorrhoidal disease after childbirth. On this data a woman who has not given birth carries slightly lower prevalence than a man of the same age, which is the opposite of the received summary. > **How much weight these numbers can carry** > Odds ratios of 1.06 and 0.92 are small, and the confidence intervals are narrow only because the study is enormous. Nobody should plan an individual decision around them. What they are good for is direction: the variable the sex difference is tracking is parity. The adiposity result has to be read the same way — body mass index and waist circumference were positively associated with prevalence in parous women, and the association differed by sex and parity rather than holding uniformly across everybody. ### What on the list can actually be changed Older age, female sex, smoking, being overweight and being hypertensive were each independently associated with the presence of the condition. Two of those five are modifiable. That is close to the whole practical content of a cross-sectional design: it can say what travels with a condition and it cannot say what causes it, because exposure and outcome were measured on the same day. Hypertension is the entry worth watching, and not because the association is large. It is the first sign in this data that haemorrhoidal disease may sit alongside systemic and cardiovascular disease rather than being a purely local complaint — a question two later Korean cohorts took up directly, with follow-up long enough to measure outcomes instead of co-occurrence. ## Sources - Hong YS, Jung KU, Rampal S, Zhao D, Guallar E, Ryu S, Chang Y, Kim HO, Kim H, Chun HK, Sohn CI, Shin H, Cho J. Risk factors for hemorrhoidal disease among healthy young and middle-aged Korean adults. Scientific Reports 2022;12(1):129. doi:10.1038/s41598-021-03838-z. PMID:34996957. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-03838-z - Hong J, Kim I, Song J, Ahn BK. Socio-demographic factors and lifestyle associated with symptomatic hemorrhoids: Big data analysis using the National Health insurance Service-National Health screening cohort (NHIS-HEALS) database in Korea. Asian Journal of Surgery 2022;45(1):353-359. doi:10.1016/j.asjsur.2021.06.020. PMID:34187725. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asjsur.2021.06.020 ## Citation James Choi (2026). "One in six adults screened in Korea had haemorrhoidal disease, and childbirth is what separates women from men". Medical Insights Korea. https://medicalinsightskorea.com/news/korea-haemorrhoidal-disease-prevalence-194620-screened Retrieved from https://medicalinsightskorea.com/news/korea-haemorrhoidal-disease-prevalence-194620-screened