| Summary: | 碩士 === 中國醫藥大學 === 醫務管理學系碩士在職專班 === 102 === Objectives: In this study, we determined whether pharmacists, whose work requires long-term contact with various drugs, are at a high risk for developing cancer. This study focused on the risk and related factors for cancer in Taiwanese pharmaceutical personnel, and compared pharmacy staff with the general population.
Methods: We used data from 2000 to 2011 from the National Health Insurance Research Database established by the National Health Research Institutes. The study population included people registered in the National Health Insurance program as practicing pharmacy practitioners before 2011, and people who had never served as medical personnel. After exclusion and the use of 1:2 propensity score matching, we obtained a total of 15,675 pharmacists and 31,350 nonmedical personnel for the study sample. We then used chi-squared tests to compare the differences between the 2 groups and determined the prevalence of cancer. We used Poisson regression to compare the rates of cancer in pharmacists and the general population. Finally, we performed multivariate Cox proportional hazards model analysis to investigate the risk of pharmacists for developing cancer, and related factors for cancer.
Results: The results of this study indicated that pharmacists’ risk for developing cancer is significantly lower than that of the general population [hazard ratio = 0.9; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.81–0.99]. In particular, pharmacists exhibited significantly lower rates of oral cancer than did the general population (p < .05). Male pharmacists exhibited a 0.69 times lower risk of developing cancer than that of female pharmacists (95% CI: 0.57–0.84), indicating a correlation between cancer risk and gender. Age also exhibited a significant correlation with cancer risk (p < .05).
Conclusions: In this study, we discovered that pharmacists exhibited a significantly lower risk of cancer (10%) than that of the general population. Gender and age were the factors that influenced cancer risk in pharmacists.
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