Introduction: Relieving cancer pain in children poses significant challenges, especially when pharmacological therapies become ineffective or difficult to administer. This case report describes a pediatric patient with renal cancer who experienced severe lumbago and was successfully treated with implanted epidural analgesia. Case: An 11-year-old boy had been diagnosed with left renal cell carcinoma 1 year prior. After a left nephrectomy and postoperative chemotherapy, the patient experienced a local recurrence a few months later. The patient was referred to the palliative care team because of discomfort in the lumbar region. Detailed imaging and medical history strongly suggested cancer-related pain. Opioid therapy was initiated; however, the patient developed increasing difficulties with oral intake due to headache and nausea associated with escalating pain levels. Epidural analgesia was administered, which resulted in pain relief and improved oral intake. Considering the child’s prognosis, a subcutaneous implantable epidural port was placed to facilitate the continuation of treatment. Subsequently, the patient’s quality of life improved, allowing for activities such as outings. Conclusion: When facing the limitations of pharmacological therapies, a nerve block such as an epidural analgesic can be an effective therapeutic option in pediatric cancer treatment.

OBJECTIVE: We wanted to evaluate the performance of prospective electrocardiogram (ECG)-gated axial scans for assessing coronary stents as compared with retrospective ECG-gated helical scans. MATERIALS AND METHODS: As for a vascular model of the coronary artery, a tube of approximately 2.5-mm inner diameter was adopted and as for stents, three (Bx-Velocity, Express2, and Micro Driver) different kinds of stents were inserted into the tube. Both patent and stenotic models of coronary artery were made by instillating different attenuation (396 vs. 79 Hounsfield unit [HU]) of contrast medium within the tube in tube model. The models were scanned with two types of scan methods with a simulated ECG of 60 beats per minute and using display field of views (FOVs) of 9 and 18 cm. We evaluated the in-stent stenosis visually, and we measured the attenuation values and the diameter of the patent stent lumen. RESULTS: The visualization of the stent lumen of the vascular models was improved with using the prospective ECG-gated axial scans and a 9-cm FOV. The inner diameters of the vascular models were underestimated with mean measurement errors of -1.10 to -1.36 mm. The measurement errors were smaller with using the prospective ECG-gated axial scans (Bx-Velocity and Express2, p < 0.0001; Micro Driver, p = 0.0004) and a 9-cm FOV (all stents: p < 0.0001), as compared with the other conditions, respectively. The luminal attenuation value was overestimated in each condition. For the luminal attenuation measurement, the use of prospective ECG-gated axial scans provided less measurement error compared with the retrospective ECG-gated helical scans (all stents: p < 0.0001), and the use of a 9-cm FOV tended to decrease the measurement error. CONCLUSION: The visualization of coronary stents is improved by the use of prospective ECG-gated axial scans and using a small FOV with reduced blooming artifacts and increased spatial resolution.
Contrast Media ; *Coronary Angiography ; Coronary Stenosis ; Coronary Vessels ; Electrocardiography/*methods ; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted/methods ; *Models, Cardiovascular ; Observer Variation ; Phantoms, Imaging ; Radiographic Image Enhancement/methods ; *Stents ; Tomography, Spiral Computed/*methods

In the farm household of “vegetable planting by plastic green house”, “mandarin orange”, “rush (igusa)”, “dairy-farming” and “silk worm”, measurement of energy expenditure in agricultural work and analysis of daily working hours were conducted at the busy season of each crops. The results are as follows:
The energy consumption per day are estimated respectively to be 3300 Cal for male and 2900 Cal for female in the household of the “plastic green house”; 3500 and 2500 Cal in the “mandarin orange”, 3800 and 3600 Cal in the “rush”, 3300 and 2700 Cal in the “dairy-farming”, 3400 and 2700 Cal in the “silk worm”.
The agricultural machines and tools are mainly operated by male and so attached muscular works not yet machanized are carried by female. And management of animals or crops specially required prudent care have a tendency to be also carried by female. Then the average relative metabolic rate (RMR) a working day is relatively higher in female than male, except “mandarin orange”.
In the “rush harvesting” and “dairy-farming”, having the most development of the agricultural mechanization it seems obviousely to be rising the labor efficiency, but because of expansion of management scale and decreasing number of employee the reduction of work load for a worker is not necessory obvious.

Mass health survey was conducted to discuss the relationship between obesity and some factors of agricultural managements and living and working conditions among 349 pairs of housewives and their husbands selected from the rural communities in Kumamoto prefecture.
The prevalence rates of obesity (20% over of the Minowa's standard weights) were 13.1% for housewives of farmers, 13.7% for their husbands and 15.6 % for housewives of non-farmers, 9.2% for their husbands. The significant correlationship was found in the degree of obesity by Minowa's standard between housewives and their husbands (r= 0.1566, P<0.05).
Being compared the prevalence of obesity according with the kinds of each household's producting crops, peoples of the household of “shiitake: cortinellus shiitake”, “vegetables by plastic greenhouse”, “tabacco” and “animal husbandary ” were more likely to be obese and, inversely, those of “barley”, “vegetables in upland” and “sericulture” were less, than those of “rice”, “mandarin orange” and “forestry”. In the household of “vegetables by plastic greenhouse”, “rice”, “barley”, “mandarin orange” and “vegetables in upland” husbands were more obese than housewives and, inversely, in the household of “shiitake” and “forestry” housewives were more obese than husbands.
Peoples of fishing households were less likely to be obese than those of the farm households and/or other profession. Among the households of non-farmers it was noteworthy that higher prevalence rates of obesity were found in housewives than husbands, being inverse finding in the farmers case.
The results suggested that the agricultural management and it's labor conditions, as well as the level of agricultural economics, might strongly affect the occurrence of obesity in the Japanese rural community.