To assess the effects of short term physical training on left ventricular dimensions and function, 12 young sedentery subjects were studied with echocardiography before and after 10 weeks of endurance physical conditioning consisted of a 3000 meter running protocol 3 days a week.
Exercise training led to an increase in maximal oxygen uptake (Vo₂max: 48.3±4.4 versus 60.0±6.2ml/kg/min: p<0.001) . This functional improvement, however, was not accompanied by any significant change in resting echocardiographic measurements including left ventricular dimensions, ejection fraction and mean velocity of circumferential fiber shortening.
On semi-supine exercise echocardiography no significant change was revealed after 10 weeks of physical training.
This study suggests that short term physical training in young subjects result in significant increase in Vo₂max but this functional improvement is not always associated with significant alterations in left ventricular dimensions and function as observed by echocardiogram.

Gifu University School of Medicine has introduced a new learning method for medical science, named tutorial system. To assess the efficacy of the method, we conducted a questionnaire survey of students' medical knowledge, attitudes to learning, communication ability, and social behavior. The questionnaire was given to instructors/attending physicians involved in clinical education. Results of the evaluation were compared to those of previous medical students. Our results suggest that the tutorial system in our medical school result in an improvement over the previous curricula.

We report two cases, a 58-year-old male and a 60-year-old female with acute aortic occlusion probably ascribable to intracardiac thrombosis associated with atrial fibrillation. Thrombectomy was performed at about 5.5 hours and 4 hours respectively, after the onset of occlusion, and revascularization was successful. To prevent MNMS after revascularization, about 2, 000ml of blood was taken from the femoral vein of the male patient, and 1, 000ml of blood from the female patient, and this blood was returned in the form of abluted erythrocytes in transfusion through a cell saver to the patients. We suspected slight myoglobinuria after the operations, but they did not develop MNMS because a urine volume of about 3, 000ml was maintained by administration of infusion solution and diuretics and by replenishment of electrolytes and correction of acidosis. It was concluded that the technique involving the removal of a large volume of blood from distal veins and its transfusion through a cell saver was effective in preventing MNMS.