We recently encountered a case of fatal pneumococcal infection in a previously healthy 19-year-old female. She had no history of splenectomy, but on autopsy she was found to have hyposplenism. It has been widely reported that life-threatening pneumococcal infection can occur after splenectomy, though cases of hyposplenic or asplenic adults, without a history of splenectomy, are very rare. We report this case and review the literature dealing with 6 similar cases.

Both nurses and clinical engineers are involved in training nurses who are new to the dialysis unit. Topics of instruction and prioritization differ depending on the profession of the instructor, often confusing the nurses and baffling the instructors. This suggests that the two professions may have different perspectives, so we administered a questionnaire to nurses and clinical engineers to find out. We found major differences in the topics of instruction that each profession considered important. For most nurses, basic machine operation and puncture site / shunt observation were important, but very few clinical engineers agreed. These differing perspectives on education between professions were the cause of differences in opinion. The major differences in perspectives on nursing education between professions were in terms of educational topics considered important, prioritization of educational topics, and strategies for addressing nurses’ confusion. A team-based medical care approach with collaboration between different professions is a unique system in the dialysis unit. Going forward, different professionals must work to gradually find a middle ground despite their differing ways of thinking and perspectives. We hope to collaborate and further enhance nursing education so that dialysis teams can have in depth discussions applying their unique professional perspectives and providing high-quality team-based medical care.

Citrin deficiency, autosomal recessive disorder, caused by mutation of SLC25A13 gene on chromosome 7q21.3 has two major phenotypes : neonatal intrahepatic chnlestatic hepatitis(N1CCD) and adult-onset type Ⅱ citrullinemia(CTLN2).So far, we have identified 52 SLC25A13 mutations and diagnosed the patients not only in Japan(166 CTLN2 and 238 NICCD) but also in other countries.We have detected 76 Chinese, 13 Korean and 15 Vietnamese patients with the same mutations as Japanese, and 13 patients(from Israel, UK, USA or Czech)with mutations different from those found in Japanese,indicating a wide distribution of citrin deficiency.DNA diagnoses of 13 known SLG25A13 mutations revealed that the carrier frequency was high in East Asian populations:Chinese(73/4 600=1/63) ,Japanese(21/1372=1/65) and Korean(25/2 690=1/108), suggesting that near by 100 000 East Asians are liomozygotes.It is important to find out patients with citrin deficiency,to treat them,and to prevent onset of severe CTLN2.

Because of societal aging, Japanese pharmacists have an increasingly important role in home medical care. This is particularly true because more pharmacists are required to perform physical assessments to optimize patient treatment. However, few investigations have examined whether patients understand the role of pharmacists and the importance of home medical care. In this study, a questionnaire was provided to 260 patients aged 20-90 years to determine patients’ attitudes toward home medical care and pharmaceutical interventions. After conducting factor analysis, items related to home medical care were excluded at the stage of exploratory factor analysis, indicating that patients are not interested in home medical care. However, regarding pharmaceutical interventions, the questionnaire revealed that 42% of the patients required the pharmacists to provide information regarding the prescribed drugs during home medical care visits. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that 85% of the patients were unaware that physical assessments are also perform by pharmacists. In contrast, >50% of the patients believed that pharmacists had an important role in physical assessment interventions.