Internal medicine
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Review Case Reports
Concurrent de novo Thymoma-associated Paraneoplastic Type 1 Autoimmune Hepatitis and Pure Red Cell Aplasia After Thymectomy: A Case Report and Literature Review.
The precise manipulation of immune tolerance is the holy grail of immunotherapies for both autoimmunity and cancer immunity. Thymomas are well known to be associated with autoimmune diseases. ⋯ Corticosteroids yielded short-term effects for both AIH and PRCA. Literature on thymoma-associated AIH, an extremely rare immune-related comorbidity, was also reviewed.
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Review Case Reports
New-onset Adult-onset Still's Disease Following COVID-19 Vaccination: Three Case Reports and a Literature Review.
Since December 2020, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines have been distributed in most countries to prevent the onset and aggravation of COVID-19. There is little information regarding the long-term safety of the vaccines. ⋯ Our cases include moderate to severe AOSD, and two were complicated with macrophage activation syndrome. Seventeen cases of new-onset or relapse of AOSD following COVID-19 vaccination, including 14 identified in the literature review and our 3 patients, were all treated successfully with glucocorticoid therapy, immunosuppressive drugs, or biologic agents.
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Multicenter Study Observational Study
Conventional and Kampo Medicine Treatment for Mild-to-moderate COVID-19: A Multicenter, Retrospective, Observational Study by the Integrative Management in Japan for Epidemic Disease (IMJEDI Study-observation).
Objective Patients in whom coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was suspected or confirmed between January 1, 2020, and October 31, 2021, were enrolled from Japanese hospitals in this multicenter, retrospective, observational study. Methods Data on the treatment administered (including conventional and Kampo medicine) and changes in common cold-like symptoms (such as fever, cough, sputum, dyspnea, fatigue, and diarrhea) were collected from their medical records. The primary outcome was the number of days without a fever (with a body temperature <37°C). ⋯ After performing propensity score matching and restricting the included cases to those with confirmed COVID-19 who did not receive steroid administration and initiated treatment within 4 days from the onset, the risk of illness worsening was significantly lower in the Kampo group than in the non-Kampo group (odds ratio=0.113, 95% confidence interval: 0.014-0.928, p=0.0424). Conclusion Early Kampo treatment may suppress illness worsening risk in COVID-19 cases without steroid use. Further randomized controlled studies are needed to confirm the clinical benefit of Kampo medicine for COVID-19.
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Observational Study
Speech Recognition System Generates Highly Accurate Endoscopic Reports in Clinical Practice.
Objective Endoscopic reports are conventionally written at the end of each procedure, and the endoscopist must complete the report from memory. To make endoscopic reporting more efficient, we developed a new speech recognition (SR) system that generates highly accurate endoscopic reports based on structured data entry. We conducted a pilot study to examine the performance of this SR system in an actual endoscopy setting with various types of background noise. ⋯ The median finding registration time was 2.57 [interquartile range (IQR), 2.33-2.92] seconds, and the median endoscopy time was 234 (IQR, 194-227) seconds. Conclusion The SR system demonstrated high recognition accuracy in the clinical setting. The finding registration time was extremely short.
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Case Reports
An Unusual Small Bowel Phytobezoar Successfully Resolved by Double-balloon Enteroscopy.
We herein report a very unusual case of small bowel obstruction caused by phytobezoar in a 69-year-old woman who consumed a large amount of bracken. The patient presented with nausea and vomiting. Computed tomography revealed an air-filled foreign body in the jejunum that had likely caused the small bowel obstruction. ⋯ The obstruction was successfully resolved by crushing the phytobezoar repeatedly using a snare. Small bowel obstructions caused by phytobezoars are often treated with surgical interventions. However, endoscopic fragmentation using a snare is a minimally invasive treatment alternative.