Visceral impairment (VI), including cardiac, renal, pulmonary, hepatic, intestinal, urinary and rectal, AIDS is a worldwide public health problem. Recently, the number of patients with VI dramatically increased, reaching 30% of the total population of disabled patients in Japan in 2006, which corresponds to 60% of patients with limb impairment. Visceral rehabilitation (VR) is a coordinated, multifaceted intervention designed to optimize a patient’s physical, psychological, and social functioning, in addition to stabilizing, slowing, or even reversing the progression of the disease, thereby reducing morbidity and mortality. VR includes five major components : exercise training, diet & fluid management, medication & medical surveillance, education, psychological & vocational counseling. VR is a feasible, effective (Class I, evidence label A) and safe secondary prevention strategy following VI, and offers a promising model for a new field of rehabilitation. Medical science basically aims to “Adding Years to Life” by increasing life expectancy. Rehabilitation generally aims to “Adding Life to Years” by helping patients with impairment achieve, and use, their full physical, mental and social potential. However, recent growing evidence suggests that rehabilitation for patients with VI not only improves exercise performance and quality of life, but also increases survival. Therefore, modern comprehensive rehabilitation for patients with visceral impairment does not simply aim to “Adding Life to Years” but “Adding Life to Years and Years to Life”, which is a new rehabilitation concept. Urgent efforts should be made to increase the implementation rate of VR.

The number of the patients requiring rehabilitation has been rapidly increasing. Rehabilitation patients and their families face various troubles and problems in their illness, their functional state, their convalescence, and a wide range of domains including their at-home life and care burden. And rehabilitation staffs must deal with these problems appropriately and take pride in their efforts and strive to provide continuing reliable care. However, most hospitals and rehabilitation centers only have one or at most a few physiatrists. Thus, most physiatrists and co-medical rehabilitation staff have few advisers and are frustrated by the many kinds of problems faced in providing medical service and management. In this lecture, I discuss how to build safety measures, how to write medical records to prevent future troubles, the proper on-site manner, and the 15 traits of a disliked physiatrist. I hope that this lecture can blow away the frustration from the rehabilitation scene and be helpful not only for patients and their families, but also for physiatrists and co-medical rehabilitation staff.

The Great East Japan Earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011. As a representative of a local earthquake relief headquarters, I report what we have done in the stricken area following the Great East Japan Earthquake for the three months afterwards. As a result of this report, I strongly recommend the establishment of a “Disaster Rehabilitation” and “Disaster Acute Rehabilitation Team (DART)” as well as creating a “Disaster Rehabilitation Manual or Guideline” in order to pass the knowledge learned through our experience on to future generations and to be able to respond to any forthcoming disaster quickly and efficiently.

The Great East Japan Earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011. As a representative of a local earthquake relief headquarters, I report what we have done in the stricken area following the Great East Japan Earthquake for the three months afterwards. As a result of this report, I strongly recommend the establishment of a “Disaster Rehabilitation” and “Disaster Acute Rehabilitation Team (DART)” as well as creating a “Disaster Rehabilitation Manual or Guideline” in order to pass the knowledge learned through our experience on to future generations and to be able to respond to any forthcoming disaster quickly and efficiently.