Korea University · Medicine
Professor Hyeong Sik Ahn's research lab focuses on endocrine and cardiovascular health, with a particular emphasis on the clinical and population-level impacts of thyroid disorders. The lab investigates the consequences of widespread thyroid cancer screening, especially its role in overdiagnosis and overtreatment, while also examining the long-term cardiovascular risks associated with thyroid dysfunction. Research spans epidemiological studies using large national databases to evaluate outcomes such as myocardial infarction and stroke in patients with hyperthyroidism or autoimmune thyroid disease.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
In 2011, the rate of thyroid-cancer diagnoses in the Republic of Korea was 15 times that observed in 1993, yet thyroid-cancer mortality remains stable — a combination that suggests that the problem is overdiagnosis attributable to widespread thyroid-cancer screening.
Since a physician coalition called attention to the extremely high incidence of diagnoses of thyroid cancer in South Korea and proposed that thyroid screening with ultrasonography be discouraged, there has been a marked decrease in the number of thyroid operations.
The magnitude of association between thyroid cancer screening in South Korea and the incidence of thyroid cancer strongly suggests that screening is the most important driver of the epidemic of thyroid cancer, particularly among females. Thyroid cancer screening, however, was only associated with the increase of one tumor histology, papillary thyroid cancer, and it did not have any association with thyroid cancer mortality. The extent to which opportunistic thyroid cancer screening is converting
In patients with AA, there was a significantly increased risk of AMI over time during the 12-year follow-up period independent of CVRPs. Close long-term monitoring of cardiovascular health in patients with AA might be appropriate.
<b><i>Background:</i></b> Hyperthyroidism is associated with various cardiovascular risk factors. However, the relationship between hyperthyroidism and myocardial infarction (MI) or stroke has not been fully elucidated; only a few studies have investigated the association of hyperthyroidism with survival after MI or stroke. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> We included 59,021 hyperthyroid patients and a control cohort with 1,180,420 age- and sex-matched subjects from the Korean National Health Insurance da
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