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Objective: This study aims to describe the updated smoking cessation and quit attempt rates and associated factors among Vietnamese adults in 2020., Methods: Data on tobacco use among adults in Vietnam in 2020 was derived from the Provincial Global Adult Tobacco Survey. The participants in the study were people aged 15 and older. A total of 81,600 people were surveyed across 34 provinces and cities. Multi-level logistic regression was used to examine the associations between individual and province-level factors on smoking cessation and quit attempts., Results: The smoking cessation and quit attempt rates varied significantly across the 34 provinces. The average rates of people who quit smoking and attempted to quit were 6.3% and 37.2%, respectively. The factors associated with smoking cessation were sex, age group, region, education level, occupation, marital status, and perception of the harmful effects of smoking. Attempts to quit were significantly associated with sex, education level, marital status, perception of the harmful effects of smoking, and visiting health facilities in the past 12 months., Conclusions: These results may be useful in formulating future smoking cessation policies and identifying priority target groups for future interventions. However, more longitudinal and follow-up studies are needed to prove a causal relationship between these factors and future smoking cessation behaviors.

School violence and injury are major public health problems worldwide. The data of this study were from the Viet Nam Global School-based Student Health Survey (GSHS) - a nationally representative survey conducted in 2019, with a sample size of 7690 students aged 13-17 years old. We found the prevalence of violence and non-fatal injury to be 14.5% and 21.4%, respectively. Factors related to higher odds of violence and non-fatal injuries in both sexes included smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, having mental health problems (loneliness, worrying and suicidal thinking), and truancy. In contrast, parental monitoring was associated with lower odds of violence, and parental respect was a protective factor of both violence and non-fatal injuries. Students who experienced violence had a higher likelihood of having non-fatal injuries in both sexes. Future policies should consider individual factors and parent-child bonding, to mitigate the burden of violence and injury among in-school adolescents in Viet Nam.

Background: Osteoporosis affects people worldwide. However, there are few validated tools for the early screening of osteoporosis in Vietnam. We set out to evaluate the performance of the osteoporosis self-assessment tool for Asians (OSTA) and the osteoporosis screening tool for Chinese (OSTC) for the early screening of osteoporosis in postmenopausal Vietnamese women., Methods: We analyzed retrospective data from 797 postmenopausal Vietnamese women. The bone mineral density (BMD) in the lumbar vertebrae (L1-L4) and the left and right femoral necks of all participants were measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). Osteoporosis was defined as the BMD (T-score) < -2.5. The OSTA and OSTC scores were calculated from the age and weight of participants. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was conducted to compare the performance of the two tools with the BMD measurements by DXA at different anatomical sites., Results: The rates of osteoporosis determined by BMD varied between anatomical sites, and ranged from 43.4% to 54.7% in the lumbar vertebrae and 29.2% and 8.9% in the left and right femoral necks, respectively. For the vertebrae, the area under the curve (AUC) for OSTA ranged from 70.9% to 73.9% and for OSTC ranged from 68.7% to 71.6%. The predictive value of both tools was higher for femoral necks, with the AUC of OSTA for the left and right femoral necks being 80.0% and 85.8%, respectively. The corresponding figures for OSTC were 80.5% and 86.4%, respectively. The highest sensitivity and specificity of OSTA were 74.6% and 81.4%, while these figures for OSTC were 73.9% and 82.6%, respectively., Conclusion: OSTA and OSTC were shown to be useful self-assessment tools for osteoporosis detection in Vietnam postmenopausal women. Further research is encouraged to determine the applicability of tools for other populations and settings., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Despite improvements in medical care, the burden of sepsis remains high. In this study, we evaluated the incremental cost associated with postoperative sepsis and the impact of postoperative sepsis on clinical outcomes among surgical patients in Vietnam. We used the national database that contained 1,241,893 surgical patients undergoing seven types of surgery. We controlled the balance between the groups of patients using propensity score matching method. Generalized gamma regression and logistic regression were utilized to estimate incremental cost, readmission, and reexamination associated with postoperative sepsis. The average incremental cost associated with postoperative sepsis was 724.1 USD (95% CI 553.7-891.7) for the 30 days after surgery, which is equivalent to 28.2% of the per capita GDP in Vietnam in 2018. The highest incremental cost was found in patients undergoing cardiothoracic surgery, at 2,897 USD (95% CI 530.7-5263.2). Postoperative sepsis increased patient odds of readmission (OR = 6.40; 95% CI 6.06-6.76), reexamination (OR = 1.67; 95% CI 1.58-1.76), and also associated with 4.9 days longer of hospital length of stay among surgical patients. Creating appropriate prevention strategies for postoperative sepsis is extremely important, not only to improve the quality of health care but also to save health financial resources each year., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Evaluation of liver fibrosis is necessary to make the therapeutic decision and assess the prognosis of CHB patients. The current study aimed to describe the progression and identify some influencing factors in patients with chronic hepatitis B at a General Hospital in Northern Vietnam. The longitudinal study included 55 eligible subjects diagnosed Hepatitis-B-virus. Dependent variable was the aspartate aminotransferase/platelet ratio index and we collected some demographic variables and disease related and behaviour variables. Bayesian Model Averaging was used to select variables into model. Mixed-effect linear models were used to evaluate the change of the aspartate aminotransferase/platelet ratio index over time and identify related factors. the aspartate aminotransferase/platelet ratio index differences between examinations, age of participants, working status were statistically significant. This pattern indicated that the average the aspartate aminotransferase/platelet ratio index of the population decreased by 0.005 (95% CI=-0.009; -0.001) after each patient's visit, and increased by 0.013 if the patient's age increased by 1 year (95% CI=0.005; 0.0219). For non-working patients, the aspartate aminotransferase/platelet ratio index was lower, coefficient was -0.054 (95% CI=-0.108; 0.001). Other variables such as gender, education level, time for disease detection, drinking tea, alcohol consumption, forgetting to take medicine and the aspartate aminotransferase/platelet ratio index were not significantly different. The study showed that the majority of study subjects had average the aspartate aminotransferase/platelet ratio index, and were relatively well controlled and treated during the study. Age and working status are factors that influence the the aspartate aminotransferase/platelet ratio index., Competing Interests: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Myocardial infarction is a considerable burden on public health. However, there is a lack of information about its economic impact on both the individual and national levels. This study aims to estimate the incremental cost, readmission risk, and length of hospital stay due to myocardial infarction as a post-operative complication. We used data from a standardized national system managed by the Vietnam Social Insurance database. The original sample size was 1,241,893 surgical patients who had undergone one of seven types of surgery. A propensity score matching method was applied to create a matched sample for cost analysis. A generalized linear model was used to estimate direct treatment costs, the length of stay, and the effect of the complication on the readmission of surgical patients. Myocardial infarction occurs most frequently after vascular surgery. Patients with a myocardial infarction complication were more likely to experience readmission within 30 and 90 days, with an OR of 3.45 (95%CI: 2.92-4.08) and 4.39 (95%CI: 3.78-5.10), respectively. The increments of total costs at 30 and 90 days due to post-operative myocardial infarction were 4,490.9 USD (95%CI: 3882.3-5099.5) and 4,724.6 USD (95%CI: 4111.5-5337.8) per case, while the increases in length of stay were 4.9 (95%CI: 3.6-6.2) and 5.7 (95%CI: 4.2-7.2) per case, respectively. Perioperative myocardial infarction contributes significantly to medical costs for the individual and the national economy. Patients with perioperative myocardial infarction are more likely to be readmitted and face a longer treatment duration., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Bui, Khuong, Dao, Le, Nguyen, Tran, Duong, Duong, Tran, Pham, Dao and Le.)

The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of amphetamine-type stimulant use and associated factors among methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) patients. In 2018, a cross-sectional study was conducted on 967 MMT patients at two methadone clinics in Ho Chi Minh City that serve Vietnamese patients. Amphetamine-type stimulant use was assessed by rapid urine test and face-to-face interview using the Alcohol, Smoking, Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST) tool. The prevalence of amphetamine-type stimulant use assessed by urine test was 25.4%. According to ASSIST, the prevalence of moderate and high risk amphetamine-type stimulant use was 15.5% and 1.1%, respectively. Amphetamine-type stimulant use and hazardous use were more prevalent in younger patients, having a part-time job, drug injection, having a lower score of self-health assessment, treated with a higher dose of methadone and missing methadone dose in the past 3 months. By contrast, patients who were HIV positive were less likely to use amphetamine-type stimulants. Cannabis and heroin use were significantly associated with amphetamine-type stimulant use (OR = 1.46; 95% CI: 1.38-8.67; and OR = 1.50; CI: 1.04-2.18, respectively) and hazardous use (OR = 4.07; CI: 1.67-9.92; and OR = 2.38; CI: 1.56-3.63, respectively). Screening and interventions are needed to cope with this issue on time, particularly in young patients, having drug injection and concurrent drugs user groups.

Most countries have implemented restrictions on mobility to prevent the spread of Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19), entailing considerable societal costs but, at least initially, based on limited evidence of effectiveness. We asked whether mobility restrictions were associated with changes in the occurrence of COVID-19 in 34 OECD countries plus Singapore and Taiwan. Our data sources were the Google Global Mobility Data Source, which reports different types of mobility, and COVID-19 cases retrieved from the dataset curated by Our World in Data. Beginning at each country's 100th case, and incorporating a 14-day lag to account for the delay between exposure and illness, we examined the association between changes in mobility (with January 3 to February 6, 2020 as baseline) and the ratio of the number of newly confirmed cases on a given day to the total number of cases over the past 14 days from the index day (the potentially infective 'pool' in that population), per million population, using LOESS regression and logit regression. In two-thirds of examined countries, reductions of up to 40% in commuting mobility (to workplaces, transit stations, retailers, and recreation) were associated with decreased cases, especially early in the pandemic. Once both mobility and incidence had been brought down, further restrictions provided little additional benefit. These findings point to the importance of acting early and decisively in a pandemic.

Given the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the huge negative impacts it is causing, researching on COVID-19-related issues is very important for designing proactive and comprehensive public health interventions to fight against the pandemic. We describe the characteristics of COVID-19 patients detected in the two phases of the epidemic in Vietnam. Data used in this paper were mainly obtained from the official database of the Ministry of Health of Vietnam. Descriptive statistics were carried out using Stata 16 software. As of 18 May 2020, the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases detected in Vietnam was 324, 16 cases from 4 cities and provinces in the first phase (during 20 days, 0.8 cases detected per day) and 308 cases from 35 cities, provinces in the second phase (during 76 days, 4.1 cases detected per day). Vietnam has mobilized its entire political system to fight the COVID-19 and achieved some initial successes. We found both similarities and differences between the two phases of the COVID-19 epidemic in Vietnam. We demonstrated that the situation of the COVID-19 epidemic in Vietnam is getting more complicated and unpredictable.

This study investigates the prevalence of tobacco and alcohol uses and associated factors among 12 ethnic minorities in Vietnam in 2019. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 5172 people aged ≥15 years. The prevalence of smoking and drinking was 19.7% and 29.9%, respectively, and significantly higher among men than women. These numbers were heterogeneous across ethnic minorities. Smoking prevalence was high among Ba Na (25.9%), Cham An Giang (22.3%), Khmer (23.5%), La Hu (26.3%), Ta Oi (30.7%), and Bru Van Kieu (29.6%) ethnicities whereas that of Gie Trieng and Mnong ethnicities was low (3.7% and 9.5%, respectively). Drinking prevalence ranged from 1.4% in Cham An Giang ethnicity to 68.6% in Ba Na ethnicity. A wide ethnic disparity on tobacco and alcohol use could be explained by the ethnic variation of lifestyles, social norms, and cultural features. Our findings suggest the need to develop ethnic-specific interventions to mitigate the smoking and drinking prevalence.