Sleep Disturbances and Glucoregulation in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

We investigated the frequency of sleep disturbances and the association between sleep disturbances and glucoregulation in type 2 diabetic patients. The frequency of sleep disturbances in 614 type 2 diabetic patients was investigated using validated sleep questionnaires. There were 381 male and 233 female patients. The mean age was 59.7 +/- 11.1 yr; the mean body mass index was 24.9 +/- 4.4 kg/m2; the mean HbA1c was 7.8% +/- 1.5%; and the mean duration of diabetes was 10.3 +/- 8.4 yr. The questionnaires revealed insomnia in 48.2% of the patients while 8.5% reported excessive daytime sleepiness. A total of 49% of the patients was poor sleepers, while 28.5% had depression. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that there was no significant association between HbA1c and other sleep disturbances, such as poor sleep, insomnia, and short duration of sleep. Sleep disturbances were very common in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, whereas there was no association between poor or short sleep and glucoregulation. Awareness and identifying sleep complaints in such patients are necessary to improve their quality of daily life.

Voice Handicap Index and Vocal Characteristics of Teachers / 대한이비인후과학회지

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The effect of vocal abuse on school teachers' lives has not been sufficiently studied in Korea. Our goal was to investigate teachers' vocal characteristics and their functional, physical and emotional disorders due to vocal abuse, and the correlation between them. SUBJECTS AND METHOD: Voice samples of 142 school teachers who responded to the Voice Handicap Index (VHI) questionnaire were used for the acoustic analysis. The results were compared with the control group of 27 office workers of our hospital, who matched the experimental group with respect to age and sex. RESULTS: The subjective measure of VHI showed that the teacher handicap indices were significantly higher than those of the control group in functional, physical and emotional aspects: the corresponding median values were 8, 10, 4.5 and 2, 3, 1 for the two groups, respectively (p<0.05). There was no difference in jitter, shimmer and signal-to-noise ratio between the groups. A cross-correlation analysis revealed no significant correlation between VHI-scores and the results of acoustic analysis. CONCLUSION: The teachers recognize their voice problems as a serious physico-functional disorder. However, the acoustic analysis of the 2 second-voice samples could not detect any differences in voice quality between the two groups. There was no significant correlation between VHI scores and acoustic measures. It suggests that the acoustic measures of voice samples with a limited duration might have a restrictive value in presenting handicaps associated with voice abuse.

The Development and Effect of Navigator Education Program for Cancer Screening on Women in the Community / 農村醫學 地域保健

OBJECTIVES: This study was performed to evaluate the effect of navigator education program for cancer screening, which is designed for improvement in knowledge of cancer, perceived self efficacy and communication skill of the breast and cervical cancer screening for middle-aged and aged women in urban areas. Cancer screening navigator is lay health advisor who are educated for providing information, emotional support about cancer screening at the community. METHODS: The subjects were 33 women at the age of 40-69 and educated for 12 hours through the education program. The control group subjects were 30 women. For statistical analysis, descriptive statistics and paired t-test were used with SPSS WIN 14.0. RESULTS: Contents of education program were case of cancer early detection, benefit of breast cancer screening, benefit of cervical cancer screening, health care system for cancer screening, role of cancer screening navigator, communication skill, transtheoretical model and role play. Knowledge of cancer(t=4.267, p=0.000) and communication skill(t=4.947, p=0.000) of the women increased significantly after implementing the 12 hours education program. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that navigator education for cancer screening has an effect in increasing knowledge of cancer, and communication skill scores.