Anterior cutaneous nerve entrapment syndrome in children.

Question: I frequently see adolescents with recurrent abdominal pain in my family medicine clinic. While the diagnosis frequently is a benign condition such as constipation, I recently heard that after 2 years of recurrent pain, an adolescent was diagnosed with anterior cutaneous nerve entrapment syndrome (ACNES). How is this condition diagnosed? What is the recommended treatment?

Answer: Anterior cutaneous nerve entrapment syndrome, first described almost 100 years ago, is caused by entrapment of the anterior branch of the abdominal cutaneous nerve as it pierces the anterior rectus abdominis muscle fascia.

Perception and handling of breastmilk by childcare staff: A qualitative study of childcare facilities in Japan.

Background: Breastfeeding in infancy has immunological and nutritional benefits. The actual status of breastfeeding in childcare facilities is unclear. However, it is expected to vary in every facility and region.

Relationship between medical students' career priority and specialty choice: A nationwide multicenter survey.

Background: The shortage of physicians in several specialties has been brought to public attention in several countries. However, little is known about factors affecting medical students' specialty choice. The objectives of our study were to illustrate medical students' career priority clusters and to assess their association with specialty preference.

Identifying the learning objectives of clinical clerkship in community health in Japan: Focus group.

Background: The value of medical education in the community has been increasingly and globally recognized. In 2015, the World Federation for Medical Education emphasized the importance of medical education in various settings in their standard. Similarly, in Japan, the Model Core Curriculum for Medical Education in Japan (MCCMEJ) is revised in 2016.

Children and adolescents in institutional care versus traditional families: a quality of life comparison in Japan.

Background: A good quality of life (QOL) is important for the physical and mental well-being of all children. However, young people who live in an institutional setting may face different challenges than those who are raised in a traditional family. While a few quantitative studies of institutionalized children's QOL have been conducted, no research has investigated the QOL of young people living in Children's Homes (CHs) in Japan.

Important Clinical Features of Japanese Spotted Fever.

Japanese spotted fever (JSF) is a zoonosis transmitted by ticks carrying the pathogen . The classic triad of JSF symptoms is high fever, erythema, and tick bite eschar. About 200 people in Japan develop the disease every year.

What determines medical students' career preference for general practice residency training?: a multicenter survey in Japan.

Background: Few studies have systematically explored factors affecting medical students' general practice career choice. We conducted a nationwide multicenter survey (Japan MEdical Career of Students: JMECS) to examine factors associated with students' general practice career aspirations in Japan, where it has been decided that general practice will be officially acknowledged as a new discipline.

Methods: From April to December 2015, we distributed a 21-item questionnaire to final year medical students in 17 medical schools.

Association between Excessive Alcohol Use and Alcohol-Related Injuries in College Students: A Multi-Center Cross-Sectional Study in Japan.

Alcohol-related injuries in college students are a major public health problem worldwide. We clarified the association between excessive drinking and alcohol-related injuries in Japanese college students. This was a cross-sectional study with a self-administered questionnaire.

A comparison of the results of prospective and retrospective cohort studies in the field of digestive surgery.

Purpose: We compared the results of prospective and retrospective cohort studies in the field of digestive surgery to clarify whether the results of prospective cohort studies were more similar to those of randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of the results to compare the results of RCTs with those of cohort studies in meta-analyses of 18 digestive surgical topics. The data from the prospective and retrospective cohort studies were combined.

Which medical interview skills are associated with patients' verbal indications of undisclosed feelings of anxiety and depressive feelings?

Background: In medical practice, obtaining information regarding patients' undisclosed "feelings of anxiety" or "depressive feelings" is important. The purpose of this study was to determine which interview skills are best suited for eliciting verbal indications of undisclosed feelings, for example anxiety or depressive feelings in patients.

Methods: Our group videotaped 159 medical interviews at an outpatient department of the Department of Family Medicine, Mie University Hospital (Mie, Japan).

Development of a questionnaire to measure primary care physicians' scope of practice.

Background: Despite an increase in research devoted to primary care attributes, the patient benefits and educational aspects of broad scope practice of primary care physicians (PCPs) have not been well studied, due to a lack of validated measurement in each country. The objective of this study was to develop and validate the Scope of Practice Inventory (SPI) to measure physicians' scope of practice within the Japanese primary care setting.

Methods: The questionnaire was developed in seven phases: 1) item generation, 2) consensus method for necessity of each item, 3) Delphi process for the importance of each item, 4) pilot tests to limit the number of items, 5) preliminary cross-sectional study to examine factor structure and to validate the construct validity, 6) evaluation of internal consistency and intra-class reliability, and 7) evaluation of external validity.

Early prophylactic antibiotics administration for acute necrotizing pancreatitis: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

Background: The effectiveness of prophylactic antibiotics use for acute necrotizing pancreatitis has been explored and a number of systematic reviews have been published with conflicting results. The timing of antibiotics administration can be fundamental to their effectiveness, but thus far no reviews have focused on the timing of administration.

Methods: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of prophylactic antibiotics for acute necrotizing pancreatitis was conducted using MEDLINE (PubMed), CINAHL and Japana Centra Revuo Medicina.

[Comparison between alcoholic patients and primary care patients for the use of the ambulance].

Objective: Though heavy drinkers and patients with alcohol dependence make use of the ambulance more frequently as compared with the general population, there are few data on the alcohol-related use of the emergency department (ED) in Japan.

Method: A cross sectional study was conducted. 170 patients with alcohol dependence in one clinic and 306 primary care patients across two clinics provided demographic data and answered some questions about the use of emergency ambulance services over the age of 20.

Which medical interview behaviors are associated with patient satisfaction?

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the association between several medical interview behaviors and patient satisfaction.

Methods: The subjects were 158 new patients who visited an outpatient facility of a university hospital in Japan. All medical interviews were videotaped and reviewed by a trained rater using a medical interview rating scale (Takemura Medical Interview Rating Scale) for evaluating medical interview behaviors.