Kazuta Shimizu

Familial spontaneous pneumothorax in three generations and its HLA

We experienced a case of familial spontaneous pneumothorax in three generations. Six of 13 family members had episodes of spontaneous pneumothorax. It is well established that there are some diseases associated with human leukocyte antigen (HLA). We performed HLA phenotyping for HLA of A, B and C. In our study, we detected the HLA haplotype A2, B61 in three of 4 who had episodes of spontaneous pneumothorax. The HLA haplotype A2, B70 were also detected in three of 4 who had episodes. This suggests that familial spontaneous pneumothorax might have hereditary factors.

Laser Application in the Fields of Cardiovascular Surgery; Experimental and Clinical Studies

Recently, several kinds of lasers have been widely employed in the fields of medicine and surgery. However, laser applications are very rare in the field of cardiovascular surgery throughout the world. By the way, surgical treatment for ischemic heart disease has been widely performed in Japan. Especially aortocoronary bypass (A-C bypass) for these patients has been down as a popular surgical intervention.