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Abstract Background Early-stage colorectal cancer (CRC) is often treated endoscopically, but additional surgical resection may be considered depending on pathological findings. Case presentation A 73-year-old man was found to have early-stage sigmoid colon cancer by colonoscopy during a medical examination, and endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR) was performed. The lesion was a 7-mm-sized sessile polyp, and the pathological diagnosis was well-differentiated tubular adenocarcinoma, pT1 (submucosal invasion of 400 μm), with no lymphovascular invasion, low budding grade, and negative horizontal and vertical margins. Therefore, the patient was observed without postoperative treatment. One year later, a computed tomography (CT) scan showed multiple liver metastases. After five courses of preoperative chemotherapy with folinic acid, 5-fluorouracil and oxaliplatin (FOLFOX) and panitumumab, liver metastases were reduced. The patient underwent extended right hepatic lobectomy. The pathological finding was well-to-moderately differentiated tubular adenocarcinoma, and immunohistochemistry findings were consistent with liver metastases from sigmoid colon cancer. Postoperatively, the patient received five courses adjuvant chemotherapy with FOLFOX. Although the patient had been recurrence-free for 5 years after liver resection, a CT scan revealed a nodular lesion in the sigmoid mesentery. Positron emission tomography (PET) showed abnormal accumulation in the same lesion. Therefore, the mesenteric nodules diagnosed as lymph metastasis and recurrence of sigmoid colon cancer and performed laparoscopic sigmoid colon resection with lymph node dissection. The pathological findings showed that the recurrent lesion in the mesentery formed a nodular infiltrate with venous, lymphatic, and neural invasion, but lymph node structures were not found, and it was assumed to be metastasis or recurrence due to lymphovascular invasion. The pathologic specimen of the sigmoid colon had no neoplastic lesions, which are considered to be a local recurrence on the mucosal surface. After sigmoid colectomy, adjuvant chemotherapy with CapeOX was conducted, and the patient has been recurrence-free for 13 months at present. Conclusion Even early-stage CRCs that have no pathological indications for additional resection have risks of metastases and recurrences, and we may need to consider that the criteria for additional resection should not be limited to pathological findings alone.

Donor-specific antibodies (DSAs) are the main cause of graft loss over time. The direct pathway of alloantigen recognition is important in the pathogenesis of acute rejection. Recent studies have suggested that the direct pathway also contributes to the pathogenesis of chronic injury. Nevertheless, there are no reports on T-cell alloantigen response via the direct pathway in kidney recipients with DSAs. We analyzed the T-cell alloantigen response via the direct pathway in kidney recipients with DSAs (DSA+) or without DSAs (DSA−). A mixed lymphocyte reaction assay was implemented to assess the direct pathway response. DSA+ patients showed significantly higher CD8+ and CD4+ T cell responses to donor cells than DSA− patients. Furthermore, proliferating CD4+ T cells showed a marked increase in Th1 and Th17 responses in DSA+ patients than in DSA− patients. In a comparison between anti-donor and third-party responses, the anti-donor CD8+ and CD4+ T cell response was significantly lower than the anti-third-party response. In contrast, the donor-specific hyporesponsiveness was absent in DSA+ patients. Our study demonstrated that DSA+ recipients have a greater potential for developing immune responses against the donor tissues via the direct alloantigen recognition pathway. These data contribute to an understanding of DSAs pathogenicity during kidney transplantation.

Abstract Background Alveolar echinococcosis (AE) is a rare parasitic disease caused by the larva of Echinococcus multilocularis. It nearly always occurs in the liver, and cardiac involvement is extremely rare. Liver resection is the most effective intervention for AE because the only potentially curative treatment is removal of the lesion. Even when complete resection is not performed, long-term survival can be expected after surgical removal of most of the lesion with lifelong administration of albendazole (ABZ). Case presentation A 64-year-old man who lived in Hokkaido was referred to our hospital due to abnormalities in biliary enzymes. According to the findings from enhanced computed tomography and magnetic resource imaging of the abdomen, transthoracic echocardiography and serologic tests, he was diagnosed with hepatic AE with rupture into the pericardium. He underwent extended left hemi-hepatectomy with reconstruction of the inferior vena cava and opening of the pericardium with drainage as reduction surgery. Pathological examination revealed echinococcal infection in the pericardium as well as the liver. He started chemotherapy with 400 mg ABZ per Day 67 days after surgery. Although the surgical margin was positive in the pathological findings, he was alive 19 months later with no regrowth of the echinococcal lesion. Conclusion AE with cardiac involvement is extremely rare. Even if the complete removal of cardiac-involved AE is not possible, surgical debulking with lifelong ABZ treatment can successfully manage the disease.

Abstract Background Although there is no established treatment strategy for liver metastasis of leiomyosarcoma, liver resection has been reported to be effective in some cases. However, almost all liver resections performed for liver metastasis of primary leiomyosarcoma are reported to be open resections, and there are few reports of liver resection performed by laparoscopy. Here, we report a case of laparoscopic liver resection for liver metastasis of a leiomyosarcoma in the right thigh. Case presentation An 80-year-old man was diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma of the right thigh with liver metastasis. The primary tumor was first resected, and he was discharged on the 25th postoperative day. Four months after primary tumor resection, a laparoscopic right posterior sectionectomy was performed. There were no postoperative complications, and the patient was discharged on the 11th postoperative day with a histopathological diagnosis of liver metastasis of leiomyosarcoma and negative resection margins. Currently, 9 months have passed since the resection of the primary tumor, and 5 months have passed since the laparoscopic liver resection; there is no recurrence. Conclusions The liver metastasis of leiomyosarcoma was successfully removed, with good short-term outcomes after the laparoscopic liver resection. Laparoscopic liver resection seems to be effective for liver metastasis of leiomyosarcoma, which is characterized by a high recurrence rate after surgery. However, more case studies may be necessary to examine the effectiveness and long-term results of laparoscopic liver resection for the treatment of liver metastasis of leiomyosarcoma.

Background: Transthoracic impedance values have not been widely used to measure extravascular pulmonary water content due to accuracy and complexity concerns. Our aim was to develop a foundational model for a novel system aiming to non-invasively estimate the intrathoracic condition of heart failure patients. Methods: We employed multi-frequency bioelectrical impedance analysis to simultaneously measure multiple frequencies, collecting electrical, physical, and hematological data from 63 hospitalized heart failure patients and 82 healthy volunteers. Measurements were taken upon admission and after treatment, and longitudinal analysis was conducted. Results: Using a light gradient boosting machine, and a decision tree-based machine learning method, we developed an intrathoracic estimation model based on electrical measurements and clinical findings. Out of the 286 features collected, the model utilized 16 features. Notably, the developed model demonstrated high accuracy in discriminating patients with pleural effusion, achieving an area under the receiver characteristic curves (AUC) of 0.905 (95% CI: 0.870–0.940, p < 0.0001) in the cross-validation test. The accuracy significantly outperformed the conventional frequency-based method with an AUC of 0.740 (95% CI: 0.688–0.792, and p < 0.0001). Conclusions: Our findings indicate the potential of machine learning and transthoracic impedance measurements for estimating pleural effusion. By incorporating noninvasive and easily obtainable clinical and laboratory findings, this approach offers an effective means of assessing intrathoracic conditions.

Abstract Background The improved prognosis of Crohn’s disease may increase the opportunities of surgical treatment for patients with Crohn’s disease and the risk of development of colorectal cancer. We herein describe a patient with Crohn’s disease and a history of multiple surgeries who developed rectal stump carcinoma that was treated laparoscopically and transperineally. Case presentation A 51-year-old man had been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease 35 years earlier and had undergone several operations for treatment of Crohn’s colitis. Colonoscopic examination was performed and revealed rectal cancer at the residual rectum. The patient was then referred to our department. The tumor was diagnosed as clinical T2N0M0, Stage I. We treated the tumor by combination of laparoscopic surgery and concomitant transperineal resection of the rectum. While the intra-abdominal adhesion was dissected laparoscopically, rectal dissection in the correct plane progressed by the transperineal approach. The rectal cancer was resected without involvement of the resection margin. The duration of the operation was 3 h 48 min, the blood loss volume was 50 mL, and no intraoperative complications occurred. The pathological diagnosis of the tumor was type 5 well- and moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma, pT2N0, Stage I. No recurrence was evident 3 months after the operation, and no adjuvant chemotherapy was performed. Conclusion The transperineal approach might be useful in patients with Crohn’s disease who develop rectal cancer after multiple abdominal surgeries.

We conducted a deep spectroscopic survey, named SSA22-HIT, in the SSA22 field with the DEep Imaging MultiObject Spectrograph (DEIMOS) on the Keck telescope, designed to tomographically map high- z H i gas through analysis of Ly α absorption in background galaxies’ spectra. In total, 198 galaxies were spectroscopically confirmed at 2.5 < z < 6 with a few low- z exceptions in the 26 × 15 arcmin ^2 area, of which 148 were newly determined in this study. Our redshift measurements were merged with previously confirmed redshifts available in the 34 × 27 arcmin ^2 area of the SSA22 field. This compiled catalog containing 730 galaxies of various types at z > 2 is useful for various applications, and it is made publicly available. Our SSA22-HIT survey has increased by approximately twice the number of spectroscopic redshifts of sources at z > 3.2 in the observed field. From a comparison with publicly available redshift catalogs, we show that our compiled redshift catalog in the SSA22 field is comparable to those among major extragalactic survey fields in terms of a combination of wide area and high surface number density of objects at z > 2. About 40% of the spectroscopically confirmed objects in SSA22-HIT show reasonable quality of spectra in the wavelengths shorter than Ly α when a sufficient amount of smoothing is adopted. Our data set enables us to make the H i tomographic map at z ≳ 3, which we present in a parallel study.