title: Long working hours and work-related cerebro-cardiovascular disease in Korea.
abstract: The aim of the present study was to determine a good discriminatory cutoff for long working hours as a surrogate of chronic overload at work, which is associated with the approval of workers' compensation claims for work-related cerebro-cardiovascular disease (WR-CVD) in Korea. We evaluated weekly working hours for four weeks prior to the onset of disease for all manufacturing industry claimants (N=319) of WR-CVD in 2010. The discrimination of long working hours in predicting approval of worker's compensation pertaining to WR-CVD was compared across cases. The cutoff was calculated with sensitivity, specificity, and the area under the curve with 95% CI using the receiver operating curve (ROC) method. The cutoff point was thus calculated to be 60.75 h (AUC=0.89, 95% CI [0.84-0.93]), showing a sensitivity value of 65% and specificity of 94%. This is the first study to report that long working hours could be a predictor with good discrimination and high specificity of approval of WR-CVD cases. In Korea, long working hours and widespread chronic overload at work are recognized as a social problem. Our study results suggest an appropriate cutoff for working hours as an indicator of chronic overload for the purpose of approving claims of WR-CVD. Furthermore, these results could contribute to improving the consistency of evaluation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Yun Kyung
authors.initials: YK
authors.lastname: Chung
authors.forename: Young-jun
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Kwon
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D019540:Area Under Curve; D002561:Cerebrovascular Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012372:ROC Curve; D056910:Republic of Korea / Q000453:epidemiology; D013997:Time Factors; D014940:Work Schedule Tolerance; D014942:Workers' Compensation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016526:Workload
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