- Need to induce early treatment and prevention of benign prostatic hyperplasia centered on primary medical cares

- Suggested that the unmet medical care could be resolved by using ICT-based medical devices and caring robots through the convergence research

A paper on the unmet medical care in patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia was published online in the world-renowned academic journal, the "Journal of Clinical Medicine", on March 25 (Wed), which has been jointly studied by Professor Lee Munjae’s research team in the Department of Medical Device Management and Research, SAIHST (Samsung Advanced Institute for Health Sciences & Technology); Professor Lee Kyu-Sung’s research team in the Department of Urology, Samsung Seoul Hospital; and Professor Choi Mankyu's research team at Korea University.

Even though not a life-threatening disease, benign prostatic hyperplasia is one of the diseases that may lower the quality of life by bringing about discomfort in daily life due to symptoms, such as urination disorder, etc. In terms of benign prostatic hyperplasia, one of the geriatric diseases, its prevalence has been increasing due to the recently increased patients with metabolic syndrome, such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. However, considering this as a process of aging or as a temporary symptom, the unmet medical experience of the patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia tends to increase now because they cannot receive medical services in time.

The research team used Andersen's Behavioral Model to analyze the factors of the unmet medical care of patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia.

The Andersen's Behavioral Model has been also used in the unmet medical research as it can analyze the predictive factors in using medical services and measure factors influencing medical use. The Andersen's Behavioral Model is categorizing the factors related to the use of medical care services into predisposing factors, possible factors, and necessary factors. Although multiple studies have been conducted on the unmet medical care, there has been no research to establish the fundamental causes inducing the unmet medical care in patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia. Accordingly, the research team investigated and revealed the causes of unmet medical care in patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia, then conducting a study on the measures to effectively manage the patient.

According to research findings, in the Andersen's Behavioral Model, age and education level influenced the unmet medical care in predisposing factors, and the medical security type affected it in possible factors. In addition, as for necessary factors, it was found that the sick-in-bed experience had an impact on the unmet medical care of patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia. In other words, it could be seen that relatively younger patients had more unmet medical care experience and patients with the higher the educational level had less unmet medical care experience. Furthermore, for the patients who had benefits from the health insurance, the experience of unmet medical care decreased; the patients lying in bed had more unmet medical care experience.

Based on these findings, in order to reduce the unmet medical care experience of patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia, the research team identified that it is necessary to lead the patients to be treated in early stages when symptoms are detected, by providing accurate information about the disease in advance. In addition, they stressed that efforts in the policy to emphasize the importance of prevention and early diagnosis are needed for the disease, like benign prostatic hyperplasia, related to which there are many cases that patients themselves may ignore their own health problems.

Particularly, the research team tried to resolve the unmet medical care from a new perspective – through the convergence research of clinic, health sciences, etc. Research Professor Lee Munjae, the lead author of this paper, remarked, “For education on prevention and early diagnosis, the use of primary care is necessary, and it is expected that continuous management of diseases will be conducted through a community care project centered on the primary medical care”, and then stated “Especially in the case of patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia giving a restriction on their physical activity, if medical care services would be provided by utilizing ICT-based medical devices, caring robots, and so on, the unmet medical care could be resolved.”

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2019S1A5A2A03040304).

※ Paper title: Unmet Medical Needs of Patients with Benign Prostate Enlargement

※ Paper source: https://www.mdpi.com/673294