Results
Demographic characteristics
Seventy-five physicians who worked between 1980 and 2012 on the Oki islands were identified, and 49 (65.3%) responded to the questionnaire. In the survey, physicians who worked from 1980 onward were included, since physicians’ data before 1980 were not available.
The characteristics of physicians were shown in Table 1. The mean age ± SD was 44.3 ± 10.9 years. Forty-seven physicians were male, and two were female. Fifteen physicians (30.6%) and 7 spouses (14.2%) had rural backgrounds. Thirty-six physicians (73.5%) graduated from JMU, and of the remaining 13, 5 had graduated from Shimane University and 8 had graduated from other universities