A 66-year-old man had presented with nausea and vomiting at a neighboring hospital. Abdominal CT scan revealed a giant aortic abdominal aneurysm accompanied by duodenal obstruction. Y-graft replacement operation was performed in our hospital. Although aortic abdominal aneurysm is often unexpectedly diagnosed by abdominal CT scan, very few cases of aortic abdominal aneurysm have been diagnosed in association with ileac abdominal symptoms; for example vomiting and abdominal pain. We report a case of giant aortic abdominal aneurysm with symptoms of duodenal obstruction, describing pathophysiologic aspects.

Sixteen cases of malignant soft tissue sarcoma (STS; 10 canines and six felines) were treated with a novel triple therapy that combined photodynamic therapy, hyperthermia using indocyanine green with a broadband light source, and local chemotherapy after surgical tumor resection. This triple therapy was called photodynamic hyperthermal chemotherapy (PHCT). In all cases, the surgical margin was insufficient. In one feline case, PHCT was performed without surgical resection. PHCT was performed over an interval of 1 to 2 weeks and was repeated three to 21 times. No severe side effects, including severe skin burns, necrosis, or skin suture rupture, were observed in any of the animals. No disease recurrence was observed in seven out of 10 (70.0%) dogs and three out of six (50.0%) cats over the follow-up periods ranging from 238 to 1901 days. These results suggest that PHCT decreases the risk of STS recurrence. PHCT should therefore be considered an adjuvant therapy for treating companion animals with STS in veterinary medicine.
Animals ; Antineoplastic Agents/*therapeutic use ; Cat Diseases/drug therapy/surgery/*therapy ; Cats ; Combined Modality Therapy/veterinary ; Dog Diseases/drug therapy/surgery/*therapy ; Dogs ; Hyperthermia, Induced/veterinary ; Indocyanine Green/*therapeutic use ; Photochemotherapy/veterinary ; Photosensitizing Agents/*therapeutic use ; Sarcoma/drug therapy/surgery/therapy/*veterinary

A 60-year-old man complained of palpitation due to transitory atrial fibrillation. The annulo-aortic ectasia was recognized, and was getting enlarged to 52 mm. After an additional examination, membranous ventricular septal aneurysm was revealed. There was no evidence of thrombus, shunt, or infection in the membranous ventricular septal aneurysm. The valve-sparing aortic root replacement (reimplantation) and the patch-closure of the membranous ventricular septal aneurysm were performed. Stabilizing the subannular tissue by a Dacron patch made the reimplantation technique feasible. To secure a subannular suture line, 3 mattress stitches were passed inside-out through the Dacron patch, the fibrous rim of the membranous septum and the prosthetic graft again. He was discharged without any complication 12 days after the operation.

Chinese Medicine Questionnaire (CCMQ-J) consists of sixty independent questionnaires and 9 physical constitutions called subscales. One type is balanced constitution (i.e., gentleness), and the following eight types represent unbalanced constitution: Qi-deficiency constitution, Yang-deficiency constitution, Yin-deficiency constitution, Phlegm-dampness constitution, Damp-heat constitution, Stagnant Blood constitution, Stagnant Qi constitution, and Inherited Special constitution. In this study, we proposed to determine optimal number of groups in 851 participants recruited from crowdsourcing answered CCMQ-J questionnaire consisting of 60 questions. In the present study, we applied k-means clustering with gap statistics to the questionnaire data and the number of optimal groups was estimated by five. The five groups are mainly characterized by 3 subscales in CCMQ-J, i.e. (i) two subscales corresponding to Yang-deficiency and Qi-depress, (ii) three subscales corresponding to gentleness, Yang-deficiency and Qi-depress (iii) Yang-deficiency, (iv) gentleness, and (v) Qi-depress. In the crowdsourcing survey, two subscales, Yang-deficient and Qi-depress are the most frequently occurred in current Japanese people.