BACKGROUND: Home-visit guidance has the advantage of assisting child-raising while respecting an individual's lifestyle; however, there are many people who refuse it at present due to individual and family privacy concerns. In addition, such medical services involve individual and financial constraints; thus, the beneficial effects of the service should be clearly presented.
METHODS: During postnatal weeks 16-20, questionnaires were sent by researchers to a group that received home-visit services during postnatal weeks 2-12 to investigate their levels of satisfaction with the services. A different questionnaire was sent to those that did not receive home visits to investigate the reasons for their rejection of the services.
RESULTS: Home-visit services were highly evaluated by those mothers who received them, especially for primiparas to reduce anxiety about and improve confidence in child-raising. Also, a significant difference was observed between the “home-visit” and the “no home-visit” groups when asked, “How much are you willing to pay for home-visit guidance?” Among the “no-home visit” group, mothers who stated less than 1,000 yen and “free of charge”(59.7%) accounted for 75.8% and among the home-visit group, mothers who stated less than 1,000 yen and “free of charge” (26.0%) accounted for 50.9%, and 35.5% of mothers stated from 1,000 to 3,000 yen.
CONCLUSIONS: The level of satisfaction of mothers who received home-visits and the reasons for not receiving visits were investigated. Two problems identified were that information about this program is not provided to all mothers and the timing of home-visits does not meet the needs of mothers.

We report a case of surgical treatment for pseudoaneurysm 4 years after Patch-and-Glue Repair of left ventricle free wall rupture (LVFWR) due to acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in 2004 in a 74-year-old woman, she had been followed in our hospital. And 2 years later, echocardiography and MRI showed a pseudoaneurysm at the repair spot which was growing very slowly. Since we found a thrombus in the pseudoaneurysm, a redo operation was performed in 2008. The pseudoaneurysm was successfully extirpated, under cardiopulmonary bypass. The infracted area had degenerated to scar tissue and we could suture tightly without worrying about a fissure in the wall. We can use Patch-and-Glue Repair to rescue the LVFWR patients due to AMI in the acute stage because it is possible to remove the pseudoaneurysm in the future, on pseudoaneurysm excision in a firmly infarcted area is possible in the chronic stage.

BACKGROUND: Reconstructed human epidermal culture skin models have been developed for cosmetic and pharmaceutical research. OBJECTIVE: This study evaluated the total and carboxyl esterase activities (i.e., K(m) and V(max), respectively) and localization in two reconstructed human epidermal culture skin models (LabCyte EPI-MODEL [Japan Tissue Engineering] and EpiDerm [MatTek/Kurabo]). The usefulness of the reconstruction cultured epidermis was also verified by comparison with human and rat epidermis. METHODS: Homogenized epidermal samples were fractioned by centrifugation. p-nitrophenyl acetate and 4-methylumbelliferyl acetate were used as substrates of total esterase and carboxyl esterase, respectively. RESULTS: Total and carboxyl esterase activities were present in the reconstructed human epidermal culture skin models and were localized in the cytosol. Moreover, the activities and localization were the same as those in human and rat epidermis. CONCLUSION: LabCyte EPI-MODEL and EpiDerm are potentially useful for esterase activity prediction in human epidermis.
Animals ; Centrifugation ; Cytosol ; Epidermis ; Humans ; Rats ; Skin*