Ablation for unmappable ventricular tachycardia in a patient with complete transposition of the great arteries who underwent Rastelli repair.

Catheter ablation (CA) of ventricular tachycardia (VT) after repair of congenital heart disease may be difficult because of complex anatomy and sometimes unmappable VT. Here, we report a 41-year-old woman with successful CA of unmappable VT in a patient with complete transposition of the great arteries after Rastelli repair. Clinical VT was induced by programmed electrical stimulation, when the mapping catheter was placed at the high anterior right ventricular outflow tract (RVOT).

Persistent bilateral breast pain treated with traditional Kampo medicine.

A 45-year-old woman presented with persistent bilateral breast and axillary pain lasting for more than 3 months. Lengthy work-up failed to identify the etiology. Physical examination was entirely normal, including breast examination.

Prognosis of patients with severe left ventricular dysfunction after transvenous lead extraction and the need for additional hemodynamic support in the perioperative period.

Background: Transvenous lead extraction (TLE) is necessary because of system infection, lead malfunction, or system upgrade. Patients with severe left ventricular dysfunction (SLVD) undergoing TLE may be at a higher risk because hemodynamic parameters may change unfavorably during or after TLE; however, this has not yet been clarified.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine whether patients with SLVD undergoing TLE have higher mortality.

Impact of bleeding events after percutaneous coronary intervention in patients on hemodialysis.

Coronary artery disease is common in patients on dialysis; there is a high rate of bleeding events after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in such patients. We investigated the impact of bleeding events after PCI on mortality in patients on hemodialysis. We included 386 consecutive hemodialysis patients who underwent PCI using a drug-eluting stent (DES) between September 2004 and December 2017 in our hospital, and investigated the impact of bleeding events on all-cause mortality after PCI.

Surveillance of Hepatitis Viruses in Several Small Islands of Japan by Ship: A Public Health Approach for Elimination of Hepatitis Viruses by 2030.

Aim: In 1990, an epidemiological survey by ship in some Japanese islands revealed high prevalence of hepatitis viruses and human T cell leukemia virus (HTLV). A second prevalence study of these viruses were accomplished in 2018, 28 years after initial survey. Analysis of these studies provide insights about strategies of elimination of hepatitis viruses at remote areas.

The efficacy of modified jailed balloon technique for true bifurcation lesions.

Objective: To evaluate the short-, long-term clinical and angiographic outcomes after treatment of true bifurcation lesions using a modified jailed balloon technique (MJBT).

Background: Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for true bifurcation lesions has high risk for adverse events. Side branch (SB) occlusion is one of the most serious complications.

EEG-based personal identification method using unsupervised feature extraction and its robustness against intra-subject variability.

Objective: Brain activity signals are possible biomarkers for personal authentication. However, they are inherently variable due to measurement-environment factors and subject-dependent factors; electroencephalography (EEG) signals could be different in days even for the same task, subject, and experimental settings. This variability could cause loss of consistency of the signals across multiple measurements of a single subject, and hence decrease the performance of EEG-based personal identification.

Impact of Late Ventricular Arrhythmias on Cardiac Mortality in Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction.

Objectives: This study investigated the relationship between the timing of ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation (VT or VF) and prognosis in patients undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for acute myocardial infarction (AMI).

Background: It is unknown whether the timing of VT/VF occurrence affects the prognosis of patients with AMI.

Methods: From January 2004 to December 2014, 1004 patients with AMI underwent primary PCI.

Neoatherosclerosis 5 Years After Bioresorbable Vascular Scaffold Implantation.

Background: Data regarding neoatherosclerosis after everolimus-eluting bioresorbable vascular scaffold (BVS) (ABSORB BVS Rev. 1.1, Abbott Vascular, Santa Clara, California) implantation are limited.

Shakuyaku-kanzo-to (Shao-Yao-Gan-Cao-Tang) as Treatment of Painful Muscle Cramps in Patients with Lumbar Spinal Stenosis and Its Minimum Effective Dose.

Shakuyaku-kanzo-to (Shao-Yao-Gan-Cao-Tang) is a Kampo medicine, which is known to be effective against muscle cramps as well as crampy pain in the gastrointestinal smooth muscle and skeletal muscle. However, glycyrrhizin in this medicine also causes adverse drug reactions such as hypokalemia, hypertension, and edema. We analyzed the therapeutic efficacy of Shakuyaku-kanzo-to for painful muscle cramps associated with lumbar spinal stenosis and clarified its minimum effective dose.

Effects of lavender aroma on sleep quality in healthy Japanese students.

This single-blind randomized study investigated the effectiveness of lavender aroma on quality of sleep in healthy Japanese students. The data of seven participants (2 men, 5 women) in the intervention group and eight participants (3 men, 5 women) in the control group were analyzed (M age = 19.0 yr.

Herbal Medicine Containing Licorice May Be Contraindicated for a Patient with an HSD11B2 Mutation.

Licorice ingestion, as well as mutations in the HSD11B2 gene, inhibits 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 2 (11βHSD2) enzyme activity, causing the syndrome of apparent mineral corticoid excess (AME). However, the combined effect of licorice ingestion and an HSD11B2 mutation has never been reported, until now. In this study, we demonstrated that licorice ingestion can produce overt hypertension in an individual without medical history of hypertension who is heterozygous for wild-type and mutant HSD11B2 genes.