Copyright
©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Rationale and design of the cardiorespiratory fitness and hospitalization events in armed forces study in Eastern Taiwan
Gen-Min Lin, Yi-Hwei Li, Chung-Jen Lee, Jeng-Chuan Shiang, Ko-Huan Lin, Kai-Wen Chen, Yu-Jung Chen, Ching-Fen Wu, Been-Sheng Lin, Yun-Shun Yu, Felicia Lin, Fung-Ying Su, Chih-Hung Wang
Gen-Min Lin, Yi-Hwei Li, Fung-Ying Su, Department of Public Health, Tzu-Chi University, Hualien 970, Taiwan
Gen-Min Lin, Jeng-Chuan Shiang, Ko-Huan Lin, Kai-Wen Chen, Yu-Jung Chen, Been-Sheng Lin, Yun-Shun Yu, Felicia Lin, Chih-Hung Wang, Department of Medicine, Hualien-Armed Forces General Hospital, Hualien 971, Taiwan
Gen-Min Lin, Chih-Hung Wang, Department of Medicine, Tri-Service General Hospital, and National Defense Medical Center, Taipei 114, Taiwan
Chung-Jen Lee, Department of Nursing, Tzu-Chi College of Technology, Hualien 970, Taiwan
Ching-Fen Wu, Department of Medicine, Mennonite Christian Hospital, Hualien 970, Taiwan
Author contributions: Lin GM and Wang CH contributed equally to conception and design of the study; Lin GM drafts the article; Li YH and Su FY analyze the data; all authors make critical revisions and make final approval of the version of the article to be published.
Supported by The Research Grants from the Hualien-Armed Forces General Hospital, No. 805-C105-10; and the Ministry of National Defense-Medical Affairs Bureau, No. MAB-106-124.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of Mennonite Christian Hospital in Taiwan.
Informed consent statement: Participants were not required to give informed consent to this retrospective study since the analysis of baseline characteristics used anonymous clinical data that were obtained after each patient agreed to share with the results by written informed consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Gen-Min Lin, MD, MPH, Department of Medicine, Hualien-Armed Forces General Hospital, No. 630, Jiali Rd. Xincheng Township, Hualien 971, Taiwan. farmer507@yahoo.com.tw
Telephone: +886-38260601 Fax: +886-38261370
Received: May 23, 2016
Peer-review started: May 24, 2016
First decision: June 17, 2016
Revised: June 18, 2016
Accepted: July 11, 2016
Article in press: July 13, 2016
Published online: August 26, 2016
AIM
To investigate the association between cardiorespiratory fitness and hospitalization events in a cohort of large voluntary arm forces in Taiwan.
METHODS
The cardiorespiratory fitness and hospitalization events in armed forces (CHIEF) is a retrospective cohort consisting of more than 4000 professional military members aged 18-50 years in Eastern Taiwan. All participants received history taking, physical examination, chest radiography, 12-lead electrocardiography, blood tests for cell counts and fasting glucose, lipid profiles, uric acid, renal function and liver function in the Hualien Armed Forces General Hospital during 2014. In addition, participants were required to undergo two indoor resistant exercise tests including 2-min push-up and 2-min sit-up, both scored by infrared sensing, and one outdoor endurance 3000-m none weight-bearing running test, the main indicator of cardiorespiratory fitness in the Military Physical Training and Testing Center in Eastern Taiwan in 2014.
RESULTS
Hospitalization events for cardiovascular disease, acute kidney injury, rhabdomyolysis, severe infectious disease, acute psychiatric illness, diabetes, orthopedic surgery and mortality will be identified in the National Insurance Research Database for 10 years.
CONCLUSION
CHIEF will be among the largest Eastern Asian armed forces cohort, in which physical status was strictly evaluated to follow up the hospitalization events for severe illness.
Core tip: Whether rigorous physical trainings including endurance and resistance exercises for professional young adults in armed forces associated with well or poor cardiovascular outcomes in their middle ages is unknown. In addition, several unhealthy factors such as cigarette smoking and depressive mood are prevalent among arm forces, which may affect the physical performance and increase the risk of hospitalization for severe illness. In this case, we will investigate the association of cardiorespiratory fitness with hospitalization events in a retrospective armed forces cohort consisting of about 4000 professional military members aged 18-50 years in Eastern Taiwan for more than 10 years.
