Publications by authors named "Hee-Jun Kim"

Objective: Pain is a significant and debilitating symptom of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) that significantly affects the quality of life and functional ability of patients. In the present study, we examined the association between pain variables and disease activity markers in patients with RA.

Methods: We enrolled 133 patients with RA and assessed their clinical characteristics, socioeconomic and psychological factors, and pain measures.

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Nursing home nurse staffing is aggravated by poor working conditions, low wages, turnover, low nurse staffing ratios, and hours per resident day. Nursing workforce analyses on nursing home settings are limited. This study aimed to understand the national nursing home registered nurse workforce by comparing acute-setting registered nurse workforce characteristics.

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Purpose: Significant disparities exist in cancer detection, treatment, and outcomes for racial/ethnic minoritized groups in the US. The objective of this study was to explore racial/ethnic disparities in healthcare utilization, cancer care experiences, and beliefs about cancer in patients diagnosed with cancer among diverse racial/ethnic groups in the US.

Methods: Data from the Health Information National Trends Survey -Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (HINTS-SEER 2021) were analyzed for 1,108 cancer survivors.

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While the efficiency of microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) systems has improved remarkably, their application in continuous reactors and wastewater treatment remains poorly understood. This study evaluated the performance of a continuous-flow MEC using livestock wastewater and food waste as substrates. The MEC system achieved a hydrogen production rate of 5.

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Objectives: Menopausal symptoms severely impact women's quality of life (QoL). Digital health interventions provide an accessible, personalized alternative for managing menopausal symptoms. In this study, we validated the Menopause Assistant Manager (MAMA®; Hudit, Seoul, S.

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Objectives: Therapeutic interventions are crucial for perimenopausal women, given the challenging physical and psychological symptoms they face. This study focused on the development and verification of the efficacy of a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) protocol designed specifically for Korean perimenopausal women.

Study Design: A CBT protocol for perimenopausal women was newly developed based on theory and evidence.

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  • The study investigates potential biomarkers to predict how breast cancer patients might respond to a combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy, focusing on tumor samples from the KORNELIA trial.
  • Researchers analyzed genomic and transcriptomic data to differentiate between patients who had good progression-free survival (PFS) and those who did not, looking at factors like tumor mutation burden (TMB) and TP53 mutations.
  • Findings suggest that higher TMB and specific immune cell profiles correlate with better treatment outcomes, offering insights for future research on treatment combinations and biomarkers in HER-2-negative metastatic breast cancer.
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Cardio-oncology is a critical field due to the escalating significance of cardiovascular toxicity as a side effect of anticancer treatments. Cancer therapy-related cardiac dysfunction (CTRCD) is a prevalent condition associated with cardiovascular toxicity, necessitating effective strategies for prediction, monitoring, management, and tracking. This comprehensive review examines the definition and risk stratification of CTRCD, explores monitoring approaches during anticancer therapy, and highlights specific cardiovascular toxicities linked to various cancer treatments.

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Purpose: To identify symptom clusters among breast cancer survivors and investigate differences in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and distress based on these discerned symptom clusters using latent profile analysis.

Methods: We enrolled 655 adult breast cancer survivors aged 19 years and older, registered with the Cancer Survivor Integrated Supportive Center from May 2020 to July 2022. The study measured five symptoms-pain, fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, and depression-using a Visual Analogue Scale ranging from 0 to 10 points.

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In the shipbuilding industry, welding automation using welding robots often relies on arc-sensing techniques due to spatial limitations. However, the reliability of the feedback current value, core sensing data, is reduced when welding target workpieces have significant curvature or gaps between curved workpieces due to the control of short-circuit transition, leading to seam tracking failure and subsequent damage to the workpieces. To address these problems, this study proposes a new algorithm, MBSC (median-based spatial clustering), based on the DBSCAN (density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise) clustering algorithm.

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  • Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in women globally, causing significant distress related to diagnosis and treatment among patients.
  • A study surveyed 641 breast cancer survivors to measure distress levels and identify influential factors using machine learning techniques, revealing that 57.7% experienced severe distress.
  • Key factors impacting distress included depression, relationship issues, work/school stress, fatigue, and emotional concerns like fear and nervousness, demonstrating the effectiveness of machine learning in identifying vulnerable patients for better support in clinical settings.
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  • Tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) is a hazardous chemical used in electronics that poses risks to both ecosystems and human health, prompting research into effective removal methods.
  • Traditional methods for TMAH removal have shown low efficiency, leading to the exploration of an innovative approach that combines cold plasma (CP) with periodate oxidation.
  • The study found that this combined method significantly enhances the rate of TMAH degradation, achieving a removal efficiency of 29.5% at optimal conditions, making it a promising option for managing TMAH pollution.
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Various contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) including pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) have been known to threaten the aquatic ecosystem and human health even at low levels in surface water. Among them, the wide variety use of parabens as preservatives may pose potential threat to human because parabens may present estrogenic activity. Various advanced oxidation processes have been attempted to reduce parabens, but challenges using cold plasma (CP) are very rare.

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Introduction: Well-designed simulation-based learning (SBL) experiences enhance students' self-confidence, self-efficacy, clinical judgment, and psychomotor skill development. An emerging concept in SBL research is psychological safety. There is currently no research on factors influencing psychological safety specifically related to the SBL environment, nor is there any literature found to determine whether intrinsic student characteristic, such as self-compassion and resilience, contributes to SBL learning outcomes.

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Introduction: Previous studies have demonstrated associations between sex and racialized group on pain sensitivity and tolerance. We analyzed the association of sex and racialized group on heat pain sensitivity, sensibility to painful suprathreshold mechanical pain (STMP), and pain sensitivity questionnaire (PSQ). We hypothesized that anxiety and pain catastrophizing reported by racialized minority groups and women would mediate enhanced pain sensitivity.

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  • Metastatic breast cancer patients who don't respond to standard treatments need better therapies, so a phase II trial tested pemetrexed combined with vinorelbine against vinorelbine alone.
  • The trial involved 125 patients across 17 centers in Korea, and results showed that the combination significantly extended progression-free survival (PFS) compared to vinorelbine alone (5.7 months vs. 1.5 months).
  • While the combination therapy improved disease control, it did lead to a higher occurrence of anemia, although severe neutropenia rates were similar in both treatment groups.
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  • - The study aimed to assess the safety and effectiveness of nivolumab combined with eribulin for treating metastatic breast cancer (specifically HR+HER2- and triple-negative BC) in Asian patients, enrolling 90 participants from 10 hospitals in Korea.
  • - Results showed that the six-month progression-free survival (PFS) rates were 47.2% for HR+HER2- patients and 25.1% for those with TNBC, with overall response rates at 53.3% and 28.9%, respectively.
  • - Common side effects included neutropenia and some immune-related adverse events, but the combination therapy indicated promising efficacy, suggesting potential benefits for further cancer treatments.
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Objectives: Menopause presents various physical and psychological disturbances for women and comes at a high financial cost. Therefore, this study aimed to identify factors influencing menopause symptoms.

Study Design: Data of Korean perimenopausal women aged 40-60 (n = 1060; mean age, 46.

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Objective: Women experience many physical and psychological changes with the reduction of progesterone and estrogen as ovarian function gradually weakens. This study applied a music psychotherapy program as a nonpharmacological treatment method in addition to treatment using drugs such as hormone therapy for perimenopausal women.

Method: This study's pre-post, control-experimental research compared 20 women in the music psychotherapy experimental group and 20 in the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) control group.

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  • Music is identified as a helpful method for evaluating clinical symptoms and communication skills in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), leading to the creation of a new music-based attention test (MAT).
  • The study involved 101 participants (51 autistic and 50 neurotypical) and assessed the reliability and validity of the MAT through various tests, demonstrating its strong internal consistency and validity compared to traditional attention assessments.
  • Results indicate that the MAT is an effective tool for measuring attention in individuals with ASD and suggests a possible connection between attention levels measured by the MAT and social skills in autistic individuals, indicating potential for future improvements using music-based interventions.
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We explored accumulated genomic alterations in patients with heavily treated HER2 + metastatic breast cancer enrolled in the KCSG BR18-14/KM10B trial. Targeted sequencing was performed with circulating tumor DNAs (ctDNAs) collected before the treatment of 92 patients. ctDNAs collected at the time of disease progression from seven patients who had a durable response for > 12 months were also analyzed.

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This study aimed to investigate the relationship between DNA damage response (DDR)-related protein expression and the clinical outcomes of patients with gastric cancer stage IV and recurrent advanced gastric cancer patients after gastrectomy treated with palliative first-line chemotherapy. A total of 611 gastric cancer patients underwent D2 radical gastrectomy at Chung-Ang University Hospital between January 2005 and December 2017, of which 72 patients who received gastrectomy treatment with palliative chemotherapy were enrolled in this study. We performed the immunohistochemical assessment of MutL Homolog 1 (MLH1), MutS Homolog 2 (MSH2), at-rich interaction domain 1 (ARID1A), poly adenosine diphosphate-ribose polymerase 1 (PARP-1), breast cancer susceptibility gene 1 (BRCA1), and ataxia-telangiectasia mutated (ATM) using formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded samples.

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Introduction: Pain is a prominent contributor to negative personal and social outcomes, including increased disability and mortality, in many rheumatic diseases. In the Biopsychosocial model of chronic pain, psychological and social factors share roles with the biology of the injury in determining each patient's pain and suffering. The current study explored factors associated with clinical pain intensity and interference among patients with chronic secondary musculoskeletal pain in rheumatic diseases.

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  • This study compared initial and follow-up brain treatments and overall survival for breast cancer patients with different numbers of brain metastases (1-4 vs 5-10).
  • It found that patients with 1-4 brain metastases were more likely to receive stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) while those with 5-10 mostly underwent whole-brain radiotherapy (WBRT), leading to varying overall survival rates.
  • The choice of initial treatment depended on factors such as the number and location of metastases and overall patient health, but neither the number of metastases nor WBRT directly affected survival; instead, SRS/FSRT as a salvage treatment improved survival outcomes significantly.
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