A 75-year-old male visited Fuchu general hospital on foot because of possible acute mushroom poisoning. He had no symptom on admission. He twice ate some toxic mushrooms for lunch and for dinner on the previous day with his wife, who was found dead in her bed on the morning of his admission. A legally ordered autopsy was held on his wife, and a-amanitin was detected in her liver, brain and blood samples. Detection of a-amanitin in blood samples has never been reported in the literature. His liver and kidney failure rapidly progressed. He died on the 10th hospital day despite intensive treatment including hemodialysis and plasma exchange. On histological examination, his necropsy liver specimen revealed massive liver necrosis and new growth of pseudocholangioles, which apparently bore testimony to acute toxic mushroom poisoning.

We report a case of arbitrary delayed surgical repair for left ventricular free wall rupture (LVFWR) after acute myocardial infarction with suspected posterior papillary muscle necrosis. The case was a 67-year-old woman who had chest and back pain in the morning, and relapsed in the evening, and was urgently transported. She had an acute lateral wall myocardial infarction on an electrocardiogram and pericardial effusion on transthoracic echocardiography (TTE). She was found to have an obstruction at the origin of the left circumflex branch on coronary angiography. TTE showed low-intensity findings on the head of the posterior papillary muscle, suggesting necrosis of the papillary muscle. For LVFWR, conservative treatment was prioritized and IABP (intra-aortic balloon pumping) management was performed for the purpose of reducing after load because there was concern about papillary muscle rupture (PMR) due to cardiac manipulation and because it was an oozing type and did not disrupt respiratory of circulatory dynamics. On the 7th day after the onset, TTE showed improvement in echo-luminance of the posterior papillary muscle head and gradual increase in pericardial fluid, and a non-suture procedure was performed. She withdrew from the IABP on the third day after surgery and was discharged home on the 12th day.

Background: Lung cancer screening by chest X-rays and/or cytological tests of sputum has been practiced for many years. Nonetheless the number of deaths from lung cancer was kept increasing all this while. We wanted to find a way to decrease the mortality from lung cancer by investigating the screening methods or lifestyle to prevent the lung cancer.
Methods: I. The detection rate of lung cancer was investigated according to each method of screening-helical CT, chest X-rays or sputum tests, from 1998 to 2000.
II. Seventy-nine cases of lung cancer detected by the screening carried from 1995 to 2000 at our institute were compared with control cases matched with respect to age, sex and seasons of screening.
Results: I. The detection rate by helical CT in 1998, 1999, and 2000 was 0.29%, 0.24%, and 0.19%, respectively, while the detection rate by chest X-rays was 0.01%, 0.02% and 0.2%. There was no detection of lung cancer by sputum tests in those three years.
II. The ingestion of vegetables was the only one statistical difference between the lung cancer group and the control group. A lesser ingestion of vegetables increased the risk for lung cancer.
Conclusions: The detection rate of lung cancer by helical CT is remarkably higher than chest X-rays or cytological tests of sputum. People who eat a lot of vegetables have a lesser chance to suffer from lung cancer.

A 58-year-old man underwent renal transplantation 26 years previously and had been treated with immunosuppressive drugs. He presented at the local hospital with backache symptoms during the waiting period prior to repair of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Computed tomography revealed a retroperitoneal hematoma around the abdominal aortic aneurysm. He was admitted to our hospital and emergency straight graft replacement was performed. After clamping of the aorta, we performed axillo-common iliac perfusion to protect the transplanted kidney. The patient recovered without transplanted kidney dysfunction.

  We reviewed the clinical features and treatment outcome of 110 children with leukemia. Treatment was performed between 1980 and 2009 at our hospital. The mean age at onest was 5 years 6 months, the ratio of males to females was 1:0.72, and mean leukocyte count was 4.91×10⁴/μl. Subtypes of leukemia were acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in 79.1% of the patients, acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in 17.2%, and chronic leukemia in 3.6%. In all patients, the overall 30-year survival rate estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method was 67.4%. In the three decades from the 1980s, the overall 10-year survival rate has been improved significantly from 46.4% in the 1980s, 69.2% in the 1990s to 87.2% in the 2000s (P<0.01). The overall 10-year survival rate was 70.7% in all children with ALL, and 70.6% in all children with AML. But in the last decade, the 10-year survival rate was improved to 87.0% in children with ALL and 87.3% in children with AML. Twenty-four patients received hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation, and the 10-year survival rate was 58.6% after transplant. Second malignancies were detected in three patients, and six patients have long-term sequelae. In conclusionn, the treatment result of childhood leukemia has improved considerably, so that more intensive treatment for patients with poor prognosis and less toxic treatment for patients with good prognosis will be necessary in future.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Recent genome-wide analyses have provided strong evidence concerning adverse events caused by thiopurine drugs such as azathioprine (AZA) and 6-mercaptopurine. The strong associations identified between NUDT15 p.Arg139Cys and thiopurine-induced leukopenia and severe hair loss have been studied and confirmed over the last 2 years. However, other coding variants, including NUDT15 p.Val18_Val19insGlyVal, NUDT15 p.Val18Ile, and FTO p.Ala134Thr, and a noncoding variation in RUNX1 (rs2834826) remain to be examined in detail in this respect. Therefore, we investigated the correlation between these adverse events and the 5 recently identified variants mentioned above among Japanese patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). METHODS: One hundred sixty thiopurine-treated patients with IBD were enrolled. Genotyping was performed using TaqMan SNP Genotyping Assays or Sanger sequencing. RESULTS: None of the 5 variants were associated with gastrointestinal intolerance to AZA. However, NUDT15 p.Arg139Cys was significantly associated with the interval between initiation and discontinuation of AZA among patients with gastrointestinal intolerance. This variant was strongly associated with early (<8 weeks) and late (≥8 weeks) leukopenia and severe hair loss. Moreover, it correlated with the interval between initiation of thiopurine therapy and leukopenia occurrence, and average thiopurine dose. NUDT15 p.Val18_Val19insGlyVal, NUDT15 p.Val18Ile, FTO p.Ala134Thr, and RUNX1 rs2834826 exhibited no significant relationship with the adverse events examined. CONCLUSIONS: Of the 5 variants investigated, NUDT15 p.Arg139Cys had the strongest impact on thiopurine-induced leukopenia and severe hair loss; therefore, its genotyping should be prioritized over that of other variants in efforts to predict these adverse events in Japanese patients with IBD.
6-Mercaptopurine ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group* ; Azathioprine ; Clinical Coding ; Hair ; Humans ; Inflammatory Bowel Diseases* ; Leukopenia

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of a patient registry system for assessing PCT (palliative care team) by PRO (Patient-reported outcome) in Japan. Methods: We operated a patient registry system with electronic data collection at eight hospitals in 2021 in Japan. We consecutively included newly referred patients for a month and followed up with them for a month. IPOS or ESAS obtained as PRO at the start of the intervention, three days later, and every week after. The primary endpoint was the response rate to the symptom rating scale by patients and providers. Results: 318 patients were enrolled. The patient response rate was 59.1% at intervention and 37.0% after intervention, and the medical provider response rate was 98.4% at intervention and 70.3% after intervention. Interviews with PCT members indicated that participants required support to input PRO responses required support and paper questionnaire was better and that managing the survey date and overall management was burdensome. Discussion: Although only about half of the patients were able to respond to the PRO, this was the same level as in previous studies. The system and its operation method have many problems. We found that improvements such as reducing items and making the patient interviews paper-based are necessary to expand the system nationwide.