PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to investigate the risk factors related to prehypertension in Korean adults.
METHODS
The data were obtained from the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005. The ubjects of this study were 3,981 adults aged over 20 years of age. Demographic characteristics, alcohol drinking, smoking, physical activity, stress, BMI, serum lipid profiles and blood pressure were analyzed in this study.
RESULTS
Prevalence of prehypertension was 38.9% in this study. As the result of multiple logistic regression, the risk of prehypertension in male, elderly and low income persons was increased. And the risk of prehypertension was increased in the case of problem drinking, alcohol abuse, formal smoker, overweight, obesity and hyperlipidemia in triglyceride.
CONCLUSION
To decrease prehypertension prevalence, it is necessary to detect and manage the influencing risk factors of prehypertension such as alcohol drinking, smoking, obesity, physical activity, stress and serum lipid profiles.

PURPOSE
This study was a randomized single-blind trial of whole versus split-dose PEG solutions for colonoscopy preparation to compare the patient compliance, quality of bowel cleansing, and endoscopist's satisfaction.
METHODS
The participants were recruited from outpatients who planned to receive colonoscopy of C hospital in Busan. Sixty participants were randomly assigned to receive either a spit-dose group(n=30) consuming 2 liter of PEG solution twice, or a whole-dose group(n=30), consuming 4 liter of PEG solution once. These participants completed the questionnaire to assess their compliance before colonoscopy. The quality of bowel cleansing was assessed using the Ottawa Scale with the endoscopist who was blinded to the type of preparation, and their satisfaction by using VAS.
RESULTS
The participants who did not completely consume 4 liter of PEG solution were less in split-dose than in whole-dose group (0% vs 13.3%). The split-dose group complained less about abdominal pain(t=2.644, p=0.009) and abdominal bloating(t=2.802, p=0.013) with a statistical significance. For the quality of bowel preparation, there were no significant differences in the bowel cleansing scores and the endoscopist's satisfaction between two groups.
CONCLUSION
Colonic preparation with split-dose of PEG solution could be a more useful method for better patient compliance, with no significant impact on bowel cleansing quality.

PURPOSE
The objective of this study was to define the predictors of health related quality of life(HRQoL) of women caregivers of the demented elderly patients.
METHODS
The subjects of this study were 140 pairs of patients with dementia and their caregivers. The characteristics of dementia patients and caregivers, Barthel index and SF-36 were measured in this study. T-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficient, and stepwise multiple regression were used for data analysis.
RESULTS
The health related quality of life(HRQoL) score of women caregivers was 288.35+/-66.10 for norm based scoring. HRQoL of women caregivers was correlated with patients' ADL, severity of dementia, caregivers' age, burden, and family support. The major factors that affected the physical components of women caregivers of patients with dementia was the age of the caregiver, burden, and ADL which explained 36.0% of HRQoL. The main predictors of women caregivers' emotional state was the caregiver's burden.
CONCLUSION
Patients' support systems must be implemented to improve the physical HRQoL of caregivers. A caregivers' burden relief program needs to be prepared to increase their emotional HRQoL and further studies and efforts will be needed to evaluate those effects.