The general survey for the curricula of traditional medicine (TM) in medical, dental and pharmaceutical courses (Universities and Colleges) has been carried out in Japan.
In this survey, TM in medical specialist education has come to focus on the following items;
1) Execution of TM educational issues
2) Prospect of education
3) Courses should be introduced from now
As a result: more than half of the Universities which does not introduce TM state reason for shortning of School hours and lack of the teaching staff. The total percentage of Universities which already introduced or intended to introduced TM soon exceed 37%. In medical and dental courses, TM will be introduced in clinical medicine as well as an optional subject. On the other hand, TM will be introduced as a postgraduate curriculum and optional subject in pharmaceutical courses.

The general survey for the curricula of traditional medicine (TM) in medical, dental and pharmaceutical courses (Universities and Colleges) has been carried out in Japan.
In this survey, TM in medical specialist education has come to focus on the following items;
1) A status of the introduction of TM in the curricula of medical, dental and pharmaceutical courses respectively
2) A comparision of the above status between public and private courses
3) Contents of the curricula of traditional medicine
4) An analysis of education system and contents in the medical specialist education
It was shown that TM education has been introduced 26% of the universities and the rate of introduction was higher in private universities than that of public.
Other statistical results of the survey are presented in this report.

Objective: A hospital Formulary (HF) is useful not only for providing a list of formulary drugs, but also for drug safety management and clinical practice in hospitals.  Our Pharmacy Division serves as a clinical training facility for the Faculty of Medicine and offers a bedside learning (BSL) program that allows students to participate in medical services.  Providing medical students with a requisite understanding of pharmacotherapy in order to effectively provide medical services is the goal of the core curriculum of medical education and HF use in BSL may be effective in achieving this goal.  We conducted a survey in order to examine the usefulness of an HF for medical students during clinical training and to determine what drug information is required by students.
Methods: Between April 2012 and March 2013, a questionnaire survey was conducted on 88 fifth-year medical students    who participated in a 1-day BSL program using an HF.
Results: The response rate was 100%.  All students responded that they understood how to use the HF and believed it was useful in BSL.  However, the level of satisfaction with the explanatory notes was significantly lower than that of other sections providing clinically useful additional information such as monographs or supplementary tables (p<0.05).  More than 80% of the students considered monographs to be useful for obtaining information on side effects, warnings and contraindications, dosage and administration, indications, dosing in renal impairment, and drug name.  Students generally considered supplementary tables useful for obtaining information on serious side effects and their early identification, points of drug use in renal dysfunction, appropriate drug use in cancer chemotherapy, insulin and diabetes treatment, calculations of pediatric dosing, and a list of clinically used abbreviations.
Conclusion: These results suggest that medical students believe an HF is useful in BSL.  When medical students participate in pharmacotherapy during BSL programs outside the Pharmacy Division, an HF that not only lists drugs but also contains supplementary tables of clinically useful information may be required.

Residents have teaching roles in clinical practice, and the importance of these roles has been pointed out. This is due to their proximity to learners as Near-Peers. There are two aspects to consider: cognitive proximity, which allows them to share what learners don’t know, and spatial proximity, which allows us to share time and space for an extended period. Residents-as-teachers programs, which aim to improve teaching skills for residents, are being developed all over the world, but are still rare in Japan. We are conducting research to determine what teaching competencies residents should have. We are running a one-year fellowship based on the results of that research. The scale of the program has gradually increased, and in 2020, due to COVID-19, the fellowship went online. We restructured the fellowship in terms of Study/Workload, Enhancing Engagement, and Technical Issues. We received high satisfaction ratings for the online implementation.

We here report three cases of choroidal metastases with ocular pain and visual symptoms treated with palliative irradiation. Case 1: A 71-year-old woman was treated with chemotherapy for multiple metastases after surgery for right breast cancer. Sixteen years after surgery, a right choroidal metastasis with ocular pain and visual disturbance was detected. Palliative irradiation to this lesion achieved reduction in ocular pain and shrank the tumor. Case 2: A 54-year-old man presented with right ocular pain and abnormal vision and was diagnosed as having right lung cancer with multiple systemic metastases. Palliative irradiation to a right choroidal metastasis achieved reduction in ocular pain and shrank the tumor. Case 3: A 71-year-old woman developed left eye pain 17 months after surgery for lung cancer in the right upper lobe. She was diagnosed as having a left choroidal metastasis. After palliative irradiation, the tumor shrank and the left eye pain temporarily resolved. Palliative radiation therapy for choroidal metastasis with ocular pain and visual symptoms seems to be effective in improving symptoms.

Objective: Monitoring the prevalence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants is important due to concerns regarding infectivity, transmissibility, immune evasion and disease severity. We evaluated the temporal and regional replacement of previous SARS-CoV-2 variants by the emergent strains, Alpha and Delta. Methods: We obtained the results of polymerase chain reaction screening tests for variants conducted in multiple commercial laboratories. Assuming that all previous strains would be replaced by one variant, the new variant detection rate was estimated by fitting a logistic growth model. We estimated the transmission advantage of each new variant over the pre-existing virus strains. Results: The variant with the N501Y mutation was first identified in the Kinki region in early February 2021, and by early May, it had replaced more than 90% of the previous strains. The variant with the L452R mutation was first detected in the Kanto-Koshin region in mid-May, and by early August, it comprised more than 90% of the circulating strains. Compared with pre-existing strains, the variant with the N501Y mutation showed transmission advantages of 48.2% and 40.3% in the Kanto-Koshin and Kinki regions, respectively, while the variant with the L452R mutation showed transmission advantages of 60.1% and 71.9%, respectively. Discussion In Japan, Alpha and Delta variants displayed regional differences in the replacement timing and their relative transmission advantages. Our method is efficient in monitoring and estimating changes in the proportion of variant strains in a timely manner in each region.