A 60-year-old man was referred to our hospital for surgical treatment of sinus of Valsalva aneurysm and aortic regurgitation. He had suffered from palpitation and leg edema since a month before. Echocardiography revealed right sinus of Valsalva aneurysm dissecting into interventricular septum complicated with aortic and mitral regurgitation. He successfully underwent patch closure of aneurysm, aortic valve replacement and ring annuloplasty of mitral and tricuspid valve. His postoperative course was uneventful.

We encountered 6 cases of descending or thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm operation with reversed elephant trunk (R-ET). R-ET was originally developed by Dr. Carrel in order to circumvent the dissection of the proximal anastomotic site from surrounding organs such as the lung, recurrent nerve, phrenic nerve, and esophagus in the future proximal aortic replacement. Three of 6 patients underwent a 2nd operation (total arch replacement). Distal anastomosis was easy and safe. One patient had multiple cerebral infarction and died after the second operation, but no patient suffered from complications derived from injury to the lung, esophagus, recurrent nerve or phrenic nerve. During outpatient follow-up, 1 patient who had suffered from paraparesis after the 1st operation died of repture of an arch aneurysm before the 2nd operation could be. Thrombosis was found between the inside and outside grafts of R-ET in 2 patients, who had been implanted with Gelweave prosthesis. There were no negative events caused by the thrombus. One patient with the thrombus underwent total arch replacement. We removed the fibrin-like thrombus from the R-ET prosthesis under endoscopic visualization without any complication. R-ET is a very easy and useful technique, but one should exert care about the thrombus formation around the R-ET.

Exposure of the surgical field and bleeding control are main problems of distal anastomosis during an operation for distal arch aneurysms. The open-stent technique and thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) are useful techniques for the resolution of these problems. Recently, TEVAR has progressively expanded in the treatment of various complex thoracic aortic diseases. However, complications such as endoleaks and graft migrations have still remained an issue. Although some patients who have late distal endoleaks can be almost treated successfully with additional TEVAR, some of them cannot. We report 3 cases of graft replacement of descending aorta after open-stent technique due to stent migrations and endoleaks. All of them were previously performed by total arch replacement with open-stent technique for distal aortic arch aneurysms. The follow-up CT after the first operation revealed graft migrations and endoleaks. The open surgical repairs through left lateral thoracotomy were performed, followed by graft replacements. The stent grafts were easily clamped after the incision of the aneurysm. In 2 cases, grafts were directly anastomosed to the descending aorta after the removal of the stent. In 1 case, graft was extended with new graft and then anastomosed to the descending aorta. These procedures were technically successful ; there were no trouble to exfoliate aorta, to perform anastomosis and hemostasis, and neither patient developed major complications. These results indicate that open surgical repair of descending aorta could be one of the safety options for the treatment of endoleaks and stent migrations of thoracic aortic stent graft in the era of increasing endovascular therapy.

Objective: For safe use of drugs, it is indispensable to carry out proper and continuous risk management throughout preclinical to post-marketing phases.  In Japan, denosumab, a novel anti-RANKL antibody for treatment of bone metastasis, was approved in April 2012.  Since beginning of clinical use, severe hypocalcemia has been reported as adverse drug reactions.  In this study, the role of pharmacists in minimization of risks of newly introduced drugs was examined using denosumab as an example.
Methods: Firstly, the description on prevention of hypocalcemia in approval review report and different versions of drug package inserts of denosumab were compared.  Secondly, the differences in ratio of hypocalcemia in patients using denosumab with or without concomitant use of Ca and vitamin D preparations in Kobe City Medical Center General Hospital between April 2012 and July 2013 were examined.
Results: During the few months after beginning of clinical use of denosumab, many cases on the onset of severe hypocalcemia induced by denosumab had been reported.  Therefore, drug package insert was revised to enhance and recommend Ca and vitamin D supplementation.  Before the in-house enforcement in our hospital, of 26 patients, 6 patients were administered with denosumab without Ca and vitamin D preparations and 2 of them developed hypocalcemia over Grade 3.  After the in-house enforcement, no significant changed in serum Ca level in the 20 patients with Ca and vitamin D preparations were observed.
Discussion: Severe side effects can be avoided if hospital pharmacists take appropriate measures based on rational evaluation of proper information.
Conclusions: For risk minimization, pharmacists must evaluate and manage the risks of newly introduced drugs.

Objective : By extracting and modeling the component factors that community pharmacists have for “YARIGAI”—a Japanese colloquial expression commonly defined as “something worthwhile doing”—and by re-defining “YARIGAI,” we sought to help improve the quality of work lives of community pharmacists. Methods : All of 139 employee pharmacists participated in a workshop of the COMPASS Project (May 2011) were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire. Responses were collected on the scene. The seventeen, 6-point-scale questions focused on the “patient-pharmacist relationship,” which may be related to “YARIGAI.” Then “YARIGAI” factors were extracted using factor analysis, and modeled using covariance structure analysis. IBM SPSS (ver. 20) and Amos 5.0J were used for the analyses. Results : To the item “I feel ‘YARIGAI’ with pharmacy work,” 12.2% of the 139 respondents said, “Strongly agree”, followed by “Agree” (41.0%) and “Somewhat agree” (33.8%). A factor analysis extracted three factors related to “YARIGAI” (knowledge, patient counseling management, and sense of personal growth). After modeling (AGFI : 0.903, RMSEA : 0.048) with these factors as latent variables and items in them as observable variables, a positive correlation was indicated for all the following factor pairs : “knowledge” and “patient counseling management”, “knowledge” and “sense of personal growth”, and “sense of personal growth” and “patient counseling management” (standardized points of estimate : 0.71, 0.55, and 0.42, respectively). Standardized coefficients for all latent and observable variables were 0.7 or higher, showing a good fit. Conclusion : “YARIGAI” of pharmacists employed by community pharmacies can consist of “knowledge,” “patient counseling management,” and “sense of personal growth”. Our results suggest that the improvement of communication skills and knowledge can lead to improvement of “YARIGAI” of pharmacists working for community pharmacies.

Papillary muscle rupture after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is an infrequent but fatal complication. We report a case of mitral valve repair performed in a patient with partial papillary muscle rupture after AMI. An 85-year-old man was admitted to our hospital for AMI with cardiac shock. Emergency coronary angiography revealed triple-vessel disease, and percutaneous coronary intervention for the culprit lesion of the left circumflex artery was successfully performed. Eleven days after the onset of the AMI, the pulmonary artery pressure abruptly increased to 60 mmHg and a pansystolic murmur was detected. Transesophageal echocardiography showed severe mitral regurgitation (MR) with flail in the A1—A2 region of the anterior mitral leaflet. We demonstrated erratic motion of the ruptured anterior head in the left ventricle, and this was diagnosed as partial rupture of the posterior papillary muscle. Intra-aortic balloon pumping (IABP) was performed to maintain the systemic circulation. Four days after the onset of acute MR (15 days following AMI), we performed mitral valve repair with coronary artery bypass grafting. We reattached the ruptured head to the viable posterior head with pledget sutures and performed annuloplasty using Carpentier-Edwards classical ring M28. Postoperative echocardiography showed no MR, and the patient was uneventfully discharged on the 45th postoperative day.

A 79-year-old man developed congestive heart failure. He was given a diagnosis of severe mitral regurgitation with calcification of the posterior mitral annulus and secondary tricuspid regurgitation. He had a history of esophageal resection with retrosternal gastric tube reconstruction about 20 years previously. We replaced the mitral valve with a mechanical prosthesis and performed tricuspid ring annuloplasty through a right parasternal approach. We did not risk resecting the calcified annulus, but fixed the prosthesis and annulus with the equine pericardium in between as a cushion and collar, to prevent perivalvular leakage. The postoperative course was uneventful.

A typical feature of mid-ventricular obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (MVO-HCM), is obvious hypertrophy of the mid-ventricular muscle and ventricle with transformation into the shape of an hourglass. We report a 60-year-old woman who had been given a diagnosis of apical type hypertrophic cardiomyopathy 12 years previously, but it changed to MVO-HCM with apical left ventricular aneurysm. We considered the impending rupture of the aneurysm because its wall was thin and pericardial effusion was detected by UCG (ultrasonic cardiograph). Urgent surgery was performed consisting of ventricular aneurysmectomy and patch reconstruction. After the surgery, a pseudoaneurysm was found in cardiac apex, so we performed surgery again. A residual shunt in the trabeculation caused the pseudoaneurysm, but its origin was not clear. She has been fine for 18 months without complications such as recurrence of aneurysm, ventricular arrhythmia or left ventricular dysfunction since the last surgery.

Between January 1994 and October 2004, 87 patients underwent emergency thoracic aortic surgery. Of these, 11 patients were more than 80 years old (O-group) and 76 were less than 80 years old (Y-group). A total of 58 patients (6 in O-group and 52 in Y-group) were treated for acute type-A aortic dissection, 5 (0 in O-group and 5 in Y-group) for acute type-B aortic dissection and 21 (4 in O-group and 17 in Y-group) for the involved rupture of a thoracic aortic aneurysm. The operative procedures consisted of the replacement of either the ascending, or the ascending and transverse aorta in 71 patients (8 in O-group and 63 in Y-group), and the replacement of the distal descending aorta in 15 patients (3 in O-group and 12 in Y-group). The operative mortality rates were 27.2% (3 patients) and 19.7% (15 patients) in the O- and Y-groups, respectively, with no significant difference between the groups. The rate of early complications, including circulatory failure, respiratory failure and cerebral infarction, did not statistically differ between the 2 groups. The overall 2-year survival rates of the patients who survived the operation were 83.3% in the O-group and 95.1% in the Y-group. Moreorer, 75% of the patients (6 of 8) who survived the surgery regained normal activities of daily life after the surgery, at a level similar to before the surgery. The present data indicates that emergency thoracic aortic surgery can be justified in selected in octogenarian patients.