Long working hours and work-related cerebro-cardiovascular disease in Korea

Area of Science:

• Occupational Health
• Epidemiology
• Public Health Policy

Background:

• Long working hours are a recognized social problem in Korea, linked to chronic overload.
• Work-related cerebro-cardiovascular disease (WR-CVD) poses a significant health burden.
• Accurate assessment of work-related factors is crucial for workers' compensation claims.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a discriminatory cutoff for long working hours as a surrogate for chronic occupational overload.
• To evaluate the predictive value of long working hours for approving WR-CVD workers' compensation claims.
• To enhance the consistency and accuracy of WR-CVD claim evaluations in Korea.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of weekly working hours for 319 manufacturing industry WR-CVD claimants in Korea (2010).
• Utilized Receiver Operating Curve (ROC) analysis to determine the optimal cutoff point.
• Calculated sensitivity, specificity, and Area Under the Curve (AUC) with 95% Confidence Intervals (CI).

Main Results:

• A cutoff of 60.75 weekly working hours demonstrated good discrimination for WR-CVD claims.
• The identified cutoff achieved an AUC of 0.89 (95% CI [0.84-0.93]).
• Sensitivity was 65% and specificity was high at 94% for the 60.75-hour cutoff.

Conclusions:

• Long working hours, specifically exceeding 60.75 hours/week, serve as a strong predictor for WR-CVD claims.
• This study provides the first evidence of a specific, highly specific cutoff for long working hours in WR-CVD claim approval.
• The findings offer a valuable tool for occupational health professionals and policymakers to identify chronic overload and improve claim evaluation consistency.