Journal of Insurance Medicine

BACKGROUND: -Mentally Disabled (MD) subjects often have multiple co-morbidities and also experience injuries, acute and chronic illness like the general population. Details of such episodes and the impact of health insurance have not been described for Tamil Nadu, an Indian state population. This manuscript intends to report on this experience. MATERIALS AND METHOD: -Secondary Data Analysis of District Level Household and Facility survey-4 (2012-13) were employed for this study...

BACKGROUND: -Due largely to the lack of effective therapeutic options, between 1973-2013, chemoradiation toxic mucositis (CRTM) has remained an uncapped expenditure for 40 years, with incremental costs of $17,000-$40,000 per patient per episode. Costs in patient morbidity and mortality have continued as well. A recent therapeutic option associated with complete prevention and/or rapid sustained elimination (high potency polymerized cross-linked sucralfate, HPPCLS) delivers value by eliminating downstream costs CRTM experienced in the first 12 months...

OBJECTIVES: -Determine whether an epigenetic assay for smoking predicts all-cause mortality in adults participating in a longitudinal study of Iowa adoptees. BACKGROUND: -Improved biomarkers for smoking are needed given its large public health impact and significant limitations of both self-report and current biomarkers, such as cotinine in detecting smoking. In the past 5 years, multiple epigenome-wide association studies of smoking have identified loci suitable for translation as epigenetic biomarkers for smoking, in particular the CpG cg05575921...

OBJECTIVES: -To compute mortality rates and excess death rates for patients with serious mental illness, specific to categories of gender, age and race/ethnicity. BACKGROUND: -People with serious mental illness are known to be at greatly increased risk of mortality across the lifespan. However, the measures of mortality reported for this high-risk population are typically only summary measures, which do not provide either the mortality rates or excess death rates needed to construct life tables for individuals with serious mental illness...

Objectives.- To quantify the mortality risks associated with elevated levels of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). Background.- Carcinoembryonic antigen is cell surface glycoprotein and has been associated with the presence of high grade or metastatic cancers of the colon as well as other malignant and non-malignant disease. Prior publications have demonstrated the utility of CEA levels in the determination of mortality risk in life insurance applicants. The aim of this paper is to further characterize this risk with a larger set of data containing additional person-years of follow-up, more outcomes, and additional variables potentially associated with occult malignancy...

Due to an increasingly better understanding of the human genome, the number of potential molecular targets, and therefore, potential applications by gene therapies is also increasing. After almost two decades of basic research, the first gene therapeutics are now entering the market. They are among the most expensive types of treatment in medicine. Over the next 10 years, the number and volume of their applications will increase significantly. So, our healthcare systems and inherently health insurance companies will face considerable challenges that will require new approaches to financial solutions...

Background.- Heavy alcohol consumption (HAC) is a shared concern of the forensic, medical and insurance underwriting communities. Unfortunately, there is a relative lack of clinically employable tools for detecting HAC and monitoring treatment response. Building on the results of 3 genome wide methylation studies, we have previously shown in a small group of samples that methylation sensitive digital PCR assays (MSdPCR) have the potential to accurately classify individuals with respect to HAC in a small set of individuals...

Background and Importance. -Globally, almost one million new cases of stomach cancer were estimated to have occurred in 2012 (952,000 cases, 6.8% of the total), making it the fifth most common malignancy in the world, after lung, breast, colorectal, and prostate. Gastric cancer was the world's third leading cause of cancer mortality in 2012, responsible for 723,000 deaths, 8.8% of total cancer deaths. 1 In 2017, 28,000 new cases and 10,960 deaths are estimated for gastric cancer in the United States. 2 Estimated United States prevalence counts on January 1, 2014, for patients diagnosed within the previous 5-years was 48,271 (SEER Cancer Statistics Review-2014)...

Background and Objectives.- Even though Switzerland has a compulsory insurance system, there is a lack of detailed information on the treatment and outcome following trauma. The objective of this evaluation was to examine to what extent cases insured by the largest accident-insurer (Suva) are representative of all significantly injured. Methods.- Trauma center analysis of all ≥16 year old trauma patients with a New Injury Severity Score (NISS) ≥8, comparing the characteristics of Suva- vs non-Suva cases (chi-square; univariate explained variance R2 ; multivariate logistic regression analysis, Nagelkerke R2 )...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Since the Framingham Heart Study solidified cholesterol as a causative agent in the development of coronary heart disease there has been an explosion of research in the field of lipidology. Many therapeutic options have come and gone as we have been refining the goals of therapy to match the mortality outcome data of large clinical trials. A new frontier has emerged with the introduction of the PCSK9 inhibitors that are able with monthly injections to lower LDL cholesterol >60% with favorable side effect profiles and recently published favorable mortality data...

BACKGROUND: -The values of SEER site recode variables are based on the primary site and histology data fields submitted to SEER by the registries. The site recode variables define the major cancer site/histology groups that are commonly used in the reporting of cancer incidence data and are added to the SEER databases as a convenience for researchers. These codes and definitions are periodically updated and changed by the National Cancer Institute as newer and more applicable information becomes available...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

This is a case report of a 29-year-old, male applicant for life insurance who was discovered to have an absence of the left main coronary artery (LMCA), with the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) and left circumflex coronary artery (LCX) each arising directly from the left sinus of Valsalva. A brief review of several types of coronary artery anatomic variants will be presented.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

BACKGROUND: -Incidence and prognosis of cancers of the endocrine glands vary greatly by stage and histologic type, and, thyroid cancer accounts for most (92%) of the cancers of the endocrine glands. It is the 8th most common of cancers and has been rising in incidence since 1975. It remains a formidable health threat in the United States in 2016 with estimated cases of 64,300 and 1980 deaths. OBJECTIVE: -Provide 20-year comparative mortality analysis of thyroid cancer in a recent group of 145,457 staged cases (97...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

OBJECTIVE: -To determine the all-cause mortality of life insurance applicants having a family history of coronary artery disease (CAD) before age 60. BACKGROUND: -Epidemiological studies have shown that a family history of premature CAD is an independent risk factor for CAD events. The strength of the association between family history and CAD is greatest with earlier age of presentation of CAD in the family member and when multiple family members are affected. Despite earlier insurance studies on this relationship, there is sparse current data on the association between family history of CAD and all-cause mortality in life insurance applicants...

An electrocardiogram on a life insurance applicant with a history of surgically repaired congenital heart disease displays an irregular rhythm with occasional missing P waves.