Minimally Invasive Surgery for Colorectal Cancer During the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Tertiary Medical Facility in Japan.

Background/aim: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has reduced hospital visits due to concerns regarding infection and also resulted in cancer screening delays. These changes may have had an impact on the progression of colorectal cancer (CRC). Therefore, the present study investigated the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on minimally invasive surgery (MIS) for CRC using a correlation analysis of clinical outcomes before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Is pneumoperitoneum necessary for single-incision laparoscopy-assisted appendectomy for pediatric appendicitis?

Introduction: Several studies have reported the treatment of pediatric appendicitis with single-incision laparoscopy-assisted appendectomy using a muscle hook without pneumoperitoneum to lift the abdominal wall. However, very few studies have investigated the advantages of this procedure. We examined the utility of this procedure in our department.

Early Neuropathy Related to Oxaliplatin Treatment in Advanced and Recurrent Colorectal Cancer.

Background/aim: Chemotherapy dose adjustments in colorectal cancer are usually based on body surface area (BSA). The goal of this study was to investigate patients with nutritional disorder who developed early peripheral neuropathy due to inappropriate dose adjustment of oxaliplatin.

Patients And Methods: The study subjects were 88 patients with advanced or recurrent colorectal cancer who underwent chemotherapy with oxaliplatin.

Laparoscopic splenectomy for polysplenia with splenic torsion: a case report.

Background: Polysplenia refers to the presence of two or more equal-sized spleens. Very rarely, one of the multiple spleens may develop torsion and infarction.

Case Presentation: A 21-year-old woman presented with left upper quadrant pain, the cause of which could not be diagnosed.

[Metastatic breast cancer with microangiopathic hemolytic anemia successfully treated by using eribulin].

A 48-year-old woman was diagnosed with metastatic breast carcinoma and multiple bone metastases as well as a brain metastasis in 2004. Multiple bone metastases and brain metastases were also diagnosed in 2005, 2006, and 2010, but she remained stable with the use of chemotherapy and hormonal therapy for about 8 years. In 2013, severe anemia occurred, and the patient was diagnosed with microangiopathic hemolytic anemia (MHA).

Regeneration of peritoneum using amniotic membrane to prevent postoperative adhesions.

Background/aims: Adhesions following intraperitoneal surgery are frequent causes of small bowel obstruction. Attempts to prevent postoperative adhesions have mostly proven disappointing clinically. Currently used by ophthalmologists in ocular surface disorders, amniotic membrane transplantation can reduce inflammation and promote re-epithelization.

Laparoscope-assisted superlow anterior resection combined with inter sphincteric rectal dissection for very low advanced rectal cancers combined with preoperative chemotherapy.

Transanal intersphincteric resection (ISR) has been increasingly used as a surgical treatment for extremely low rectal cancer. We hypothesized that high quality less invasive surgery could be achieved if ISR and laparoscopic surgery were combined. The patient was a 46-year-old male with advanced rectal cancer on the lower rectum adjacent to the dentate line.

[Case of laparoscopic cholecystectomy for a double gallbladder].

A case of a double gallbladder, a congenital anomaly of biliary system is reported in a 71-year-old woman presenting with right hypochondrial pain. After a confirmed diagnosis of double gallbladder with gallstones was made by MRCP or ERCP, both gallbladders were removed laparoscopically. Double gallbladder is rare anatomic malformation of the biliary tract with only 88 cases, including ours, reported in the Japanese literature.

The molecule role ontology: an ontology for annotation of signal transduction pathway molecules in the scientific literature.

In general, it is not easy to specify a single sequence identity for each molecule name that appears in a pathway in the scientific literature. A molecule name may stand for concepts of various granularities, from concrete objects such as H-Ras and ERK1 to abstract concepts or categories such as Ras and MAPK. Typically, the relations among molecule names derive a hierarchical structure; without a proper way to handle this knowledge, it becomes ever more difficult to develop a reliable pathway database.

Event ontology: a pathway-centric ontology for biological processes.

Event ontology is a new biomedical ontology developed to annotate pathway components in a pathway database. It organizes the concepts and terms of sub-pathways, pathways, biological phenomena, experimental conditions, medications, and external stimuli appearing in biological pathways (e.g.

Monoclonal antibody conjugated to gadolinium as a contrast agent for magnetic resonance imaging of human rectal carcinoma.

Background And Objectives: Local disease is the most frequent recurrence pattern of rectal carcinoma, and its prognosis is not good. One reason for the poor prognosis is the difficulty of making the diagnosis at an early stage. To detect local recurrence as early as possible, we produced the monoclonal antibody, A7-gadolinium (Mab A7-Gd), conjugate as a contrast agent for magnetic resonance imaging to distinguish between carcinoma and normal tissue.

[A long-term survival case with multiple liver metastases from duodenal gastrointestinal stromal tumor that was drastically reduced by the treatment with imatinib].

Constitutive activation of c-kit receptor tyrosine kinase is a critical factor in the pathogenesis of gastrointestinal stromal tumors. Imatinib mesylate (IM), a selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor, has been shown in clinical studies to work against such tumors. But there is little information on whether a combination of IM and surgical treatment can prolong survival in a case of unresectable multiple liver metastases.

[Utility of dopa decarboxylase as a novel marker for the detection of peritoneal micro-metastases of gastric cancer with realtime RT-PCR].

We have examined the utility of DDC as a novel marker for the detection of peritoneal micrometastases of gastric cancer. DDC mRNA in the peritoneal wash from 114 gastric cancer patients was quantified for a comparison of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) mRNA by means of real-time RT-PCR with a fluorescently labeled probe to predict peritoneal recurrence. The cut-off value was set at the upper limit of the quantitative value for non-cancer patients, and those above this cut-off value constituted the micrometastasis (MM+) group.

Management of postoperative follow-up and surgical treatment for Krukenberg tumor from colorectal cancers.

Background/aims: The purpose of this retrospective study was to evaluate the clinical presentation as well as surgical intervention for ovarian metastasis from colorectal cancers identified during postoperative follow-up.

Methodology: Nine cases of ovarian metastasis were observed among 452 female patients with colon cancers between 1990 and 2000. Initial symptoms were pain (67%), pelvic mass (50%), vaginal bleeding (33%), and uterine bleeding (17%).

Relationships between oxygen and glucose metabolism in human liver tumours: positron emission tomography using (15)O and (18)F-deoxyglucose.

Background: Recently, investigators have measured glucose utilization in liver tumours using F-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET) in order to characterize tumours and predict therapeutic effects. However, the detectability of liver tumours by this method remains unclear. In addition, no study has examined the association between oxygen and glucose metabolism in liver tumours using PET.

FREX: a query interface for biological processes with hierarchical and recursive structures.

An intelligent system for signal transduction pathways and other higher order functional knowledge is presented. Molecular mechanisms of biological processes are typically represented as diagrams ("pathways") that have a graph-analogical network structure. However, due to the diversity of topics that pathways cover, their constituent biological entities are highly diverse and range from metal ion to protein to biological processes in general.

[Screening of novel biomarkers for the detection of intraperitoneally disseminated cancer cells using human cDNA microarray].

In this study, we performed a global analysis of the differential gene expression of a gastric cancer cell line established from a primary main tumor (SNU-1) and that of other cell lines established from the metastasis to the peritoneal cavity (KATO-III, SNU-5, SNU-719, MKN45P, HS39). The application of a high-density cDNA microarray method made it possible to analyze the expression of approximately 21,168 genes. Our examinations of KATO-III, SNU-5, SNU-719, MKN45P, and HS39 showed that several genes were up-regulated in addition to expression of sequence tags (ESTs).