Elderly people with chronic lung diseases are always suffered from dyspnea, so they also have much troubles in gastrointestinal functions on the basis of anxiety and insomnia. As a result, they become malnourished with a weakened immune system and are often hospitalized due to respiratory infections for a long time. Their quality of life deteriorates. This time, we experienced an elderly female patient with old pulmonary tuberculosis who was generalized weakness, showed improved appetite loss, physical activity, and dementia symptoms by taking ninjin'yoeito and kososan. She could avoid re-hospitalization due to respiratory infections. Ninjin'yoeito enhanced her energy and physical strength. As a result, she seems to have become markedly healthy. This prescription is expected to be useful for the rapidly increasing number of elderly patients with chronic lung diseases.

Number of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients tend to increase in middle and older aged people. They have shown a certain degree of improvement with various Western medicine treatments including smoking cessation guidance, rehabilitation, home oxygen therapy, inhalation therapy and so on. However, it is a clinical problem that some elderly people have acute exacerbations frequently due to infectious diseases and have poor prognoses. This time, we experienced an elderly COPD patient with type II respiratory failure. He was repeatedly hospitalized and needed treatment with a ventilator temporarily. We conducted Kampo medical examination on him, and diagnosed that he had cold state in the lungs. So, we administered ryokankyomishingeninto to him. As a result, he recovered dramatically, and he was never hospitalized again due to respiratory failure for a long time. It is suggested that ryokankyomishingeninto may be effective for some COPD patients who have cold state in the lungs.

The number of elderly people with chronic heart failure is increasing ; they have acute exacerbations at a high rate due to mergers of infections and others. At that time, they received furosemide intravenous injection and tolvaptan oral medication as internal treatments. However, there are refractory patients (tolvaptan nonresponder) at a certain frequency. In these cases we experienced two cases in which goreisan were effective for untreatable congestive heart failure. Goreisan administration resulted in an increase in urine volume in both cases, marked improvements in symptoms, physiological findings and various laboratory findings. In addition, they continued taking these medicines after discharge. As a result, for about a year, they were never rehospitalized due to heart failure. It is conceivable that goreisan normalized the uneven distribution of water in organs and tissues, and reactivated the action of tolvaptan in the renal collecting duct. These results suggest that the combined use of goreisan will be useful for untreatable congestive heart failure.

Molecularly-targeted agents such as cetuximab, an anti-EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) monoclonal antibody have been used for the treatment of head and neck cancer. However, these agents frequently induce adverse skin reactions including acne-like rash and paronychia. For these problems, minocycline oral and heparinoid or steroid ointments, are commonly used. Some patients, however, cannot be controlled just by using these drugs. This case report shows a man in his 50s, who was treated for recurrence of nasal cancer. He received a long-term cetuximab therapy for 1 year and a half, and had severe paronychia and skin rash. Medication of unseiin and shiunko ointment decreased these adverse skin reactions, especially, paronychia on his first toes didn't need to be treated by steroid ointment anymore. When the common skin therapies are not effective, these Kampo therapies are possibly one of the options for the supportive care for the patients using cetuximab.