Health and Healthcare: Prevention of Health Issues, Health Problems and Suicide

A special issue of Healthcare (ISSN 2227-9032). This special issue belongs to the section "Health Assessments".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 163

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Research and Education Faculty, Medical Sciences Health Service Center, Kochi University, 2-5-1 Akebono-cho, Kochi-shi, Kochi 780-8520, Japan
Interests: health; healthcare; medicine; nursing; suicide prevention; social health items; care

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Guest Editor
Faculty of Medicine, Shimane University, Izumo 693-8501, Japan
Interests: public health; epidemiology; healthcare management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Health is the very important element for everyone around the world. To maintain health, it is necessary to consider primary prevention, secondary prevention, and tertiary prevention. Health items (including both Health Issues and Health Problems) are involved in many fields, and collaborative discussion and preventive measures in these fields are also necessary. There have been many scientific studies on the topic of health items, but the scientific discussion on the items is evolving and more studies are still important.

Therefore, I am pleased to invite researchers from various health-related fields to contribute to the Special Issue ‘Health and Healthcare: Prevention of Health Issues, Health Problems and Suicide’.

This Special Issue aims to publish original studies and reviews from a lot of science fields, including medicine and nursing. The directionality of this Special Issue for researchers who plan to contribute their work is ‘latest health studies’, ‘Studies into preventive health perspectives’, ‘Studies from healthcare perspectives’, and ‘Studies for suicide prevention and social health items’ etc. It is assumed that study methods will vary.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Ken Inoue
Prof. Dr. Yasuyuki Fujita
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • health
  • healthcare
  • medicine
  • nursing
  • suicide prevention
  • social health items
  • care

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

10 pages, 204 KiB  
Article
Evaluation of Pre-Treatment Assessment of Semaglutide Users: Balancing the Benefits of Weight Loss vs. Potential Health Consequences
by Faten F. Bin Dayel, Rakan J. Alanazi, Miteb A. Alenazi, Sahar Alkhalifah, Mohammed Alfaifi, Sultan Alghadeer and Abdulrahman Alwhaibi
Healthcare 2025, 13(15), 1827; https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare13151827 (registering DOI) - 26 Jul 2025
Abstract
Background: Although semaglutide (Ozempic®) is being prescribed off-label to individuals with obesity, some concerns have arisen regarding its use, particularly regarding the risk of thyroid and pancreatic disorders. Therefore, it is crucial to screen patients’ medical and family disease histories, as [...] Read more.
Background: Although semaglutide (Ozempic®) is being prescribed off-label to individuals with obesity, some concerns have arisen regarding its use, particularly regarding the risk of thyroid and pancreatic disorders. Therefore, it is crucial to screen patients’ medical and family disease histories, as well as certain clinical parameters, before initiating this treatment for obesity or weight management. However, there is limited research investigating whether pretreatment assessment is adopted in clinical practice. Method: This is a single-center retrospective study involving adults who were prescribed semaglutide for obesity or weight management. Demographic data, comorbid conditions, semaglutide-related lab work, and disease history assessments, including pancreatitis, thyroid abnormalities, oculopathy, neuropathy, and any family history of thyroid cancer, were evaluated and documented prior to treatment initiation. Results: In total, 715 patients were included in the study, with an average age of 40.2 ± 12.0 years, and 49.5% of participants were male. The average weight and BMI prior to using semaglutide were 99.8 ± 18.1 kg and 36.3 ± 8.3 kg/m2, respectively, with predominantly overweight and obese individuals (collectively 91.3%). Approximately 69% of patients had 3–5 complications, with a high prevalence of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases before using semaglutide. Although HbA1c, serum creatinine, TSH, T3, T4, triglycerides, HDL, LDL, total cholesterol, and total bilirubin were monitored prior to semaglutide use, none of the patients’ pancreatic lipase, amylase, or calcitonin levels were measured. Although it is important to investigate all personal and family disease histories, including thyroid abnormalities, thyroid cancer, pancreatitis, retinopathy, eye problems, and neuropathy prior to semaglutide initiation, checks were only conducted in 1.8% of patients, despite 98.6% having at least one of the diseases assessed pretreatment. Conclusions: The current pretreatment assessment approach for patients prescribed semaglutide for weight reduction is underdeveloped, particularly with regard to assessing the influence of disease history on semaglutide use. This predisposes patients to a risk of severe clinical outcomes, including thyroid cancer, pancreatitis, and retinopathy. Full article
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