Background and PurposeThe Japanese Clinical Practice Guidelines for Management of Sepsis and Septic Shock 2016 (J‐SSCG 2016), a Japanese‐specific set of clinical practice guidelines for sepsis and septic shock created jointly by the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine and the Japanese Association for Acute Medicine, was first released in February 2017 in Japanese. An English‐language version of these guidelines was created based on the contents of the original Japanese‐language version.MethodsMembers of the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine and the Japanese Association for Acute Medicine were selected and organized into 19 committee members and 52 working group members. The guidelines were prepared in accordance with the Medical Information Network Distribution Service (Minds) creation procedures. The Academic Guidelines Promotion Team was organized to oversee and provide academic support to the respective activities allocated to each Guideline Creation Team. To improve quality assurance and workflow transparency, a mutual peer review system was established, and discussions within each team were open to the public. Public comments were collected once after the initial formulation of a clinical question (CQ), and twice during the review of the final draft. Recommendations were determined to have been adopted after obtaining support from a two‐thirds (>66.6%) majority vote of each of the 19 committee members.ResultsA total of 87 CQs were selected among 19 clinical areas, including pediatric topics and several other important areas not covered in the first edition of the Japanese guidelines (J‐SSCG 2012). The approval rate obtained through committee voting, in addition to ratings of the strengths of the recommendation and its supporting evidence were also added to each recommendation statement. We conducted meta‐analyses for 29 CQs. Thirty seven CQs contained recommendations in the form of an expert consensus due to insufficient evidence. No recommendations were provided for 5 CQs.ConclusionsBased on the evidence gathered, we were able to formulate Japanese‐specific clinical practice guidelines that are tailored to the Japanese context in a highly transparent manner. These guidelines can easily be used not only by specialists, but also by non‐specialists, general clinicians, nurses, pharmacists, clinical engineers, and other healthcare professionals.

The initial steps involved in the thermal decomposition of formic acid in the temperature range of 1370–2000 K have been investigated by monitoring the IR emission intensities at 3.4 and 4.6 μm, corresponding to the reactant and carbon monoxide, respectively, behind reflected shock waves in mixtures diluted in Ar (0.1–1.5 mol%, total densities 5.3×10−6–3.2×10−5 mol cm−3). It was found that the decomposition proceeded via channel (1) HCOOH+Ar→CO+H2O+Ar dominantly and the contribution of channel (2) HCOOH+Ar→CO2+H2+Ar was very small. An Arrhenius expression of the second order rate constant was obtained as k1,0 =1014.32  exp(−40.4 kcal mol−1/RT) cm3 mol−1 s−1. Ab initio calculations were performed for probable transition states (TS) of channels (1) and (2). The results showed that the potential energy for a TS of channel (1) was lower than that of channel (2) by 20–30 kcal mol−1. On the basis of a RRKM weak collision, k2,0 values were estimated which was smaller than k1,0 by about two orders, being consistent with the experimental results.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) results from the progressive accumulation of genetic and epigenetic alterations that lead to the transformation of normal colonic mucosa to adenocarcinoma. Approximately 75% of CRCs are sporadic and occur in people without genetic predisposition or family history of CRC. During the past two decades, sporadic CRCs were classified into three major groups according to frequently altered/mutated genes. These genes have been identified by linkage analyses of cancer-prone families and by individual mutation analyses of candidate genes selected on the basis of functional data. In the first half of this review, we describe the genetic pathways of sporadic CRCs and their clinicopathologic features. Recently, large-scale genome analyses have detected many infrequently mutated genes as well as a small number of frequently mutated genes. These infrequently mutated genes are likely described in a limited number of pathways. Gene-oriented models of CRC progression are being replaced by pathway-oriented models. In the second half of this review, we summarize the present knowledge of this research field and discuss its prospects.

Background and purposeThe Japanese Clinical Practice Guidelines for Management of Sepsis and Septic Shock 2016 (J-SSCG 2016), a Japanese-specific set of clinical practice guidelines for sepsis and septic shock created jointly by the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine and the Japanese Association for Acute Medicine, was first released in February 2017 and published in the Journal of JSICM, [2017; Volume 24 (supplement 2)] 10.3918/jsicm.24S0001 and Journal of Japanese Association for Acute Medicine [2017; Volume 28, (supplement 1)] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jja2.2017.28.issue-S1/issuetoc.This abridged English edition of the J-SSCG 2016 was produced with permission from the Japanese Association of Acute Medicine and the Japanese Society for Intensive Care Medicine.MethodsMembers of the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine and the Japanese Association for Acute Medicine were selected and organized into 19 committee members and 52 working group members. The guidelines were prepared in accordance with the Medical Information Network Distribution Service (Minds) creation procedures. The Academic Guidelines Promotion Team was organized to oversee and provide academic support to the respective activities allocated to each Guideline Creation Team. To improve quality assurance and workflow transparency, a mutual peer review system was established, and discussions within each team were open to the public. Public comments were collected once after the initial formulation of a clinical question (CQ) and twice during the review of the final draft. Recommendations were determined to have been adopted after obtaining support from a two-thirds (> 66.6%) majority vote of each of the 19 committee members.ResultsA total of 87 CQs were selected among 19 clinical areas, including pediatric topics and several other important areas not covered in the first edition of the Japanese guidelines (J-SSCG 2012). The approval rate obtained through committee voting, in addition to ratings of the strengths of the recommendation, and its supporting evidence were also added to each recommendation statement. We conducted meta-analyses for 29 CQs. Thirty-seven CQs contained recommendations in the form of an expert consensus due to insufficient evidence. No recommendations were provided for five CQs.ConclusionsBased on the evidence gathered, we were able to formulate Japanese-specific clinical practice guidelines that are tailored to the Japanese context in a highly transparent manner. These guidelines can easily be used not only by specialists, but also by non-specialists, general clinicians, nurses, pharmacists, clinical engineers, and other healthcare professionals.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s40560-017-0270-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Our series included more small size carcinomas than did previous series. Lymph node status does not appear to be markedly different from that of the usual invasive ductal carcinomas. Her2/neu expression was similar to that found in common breast carcinomas.

We described the histopathological morphology of FTMT breast tissue. The frequency of carcinoma and hyperplasia did not differ significantly between FTMT women who had used androgen therapy and those who had not. These findings suggest that androgen does not alter the risk of carcinoma developing in the mammary glands of FTMT women.

While our series is too small to make conclusions about the behavior of IMC, the difference in 6-year survival rate between the patients with IMC and those with breast carcinoma in general was statistically significant. Recognition of this distinctive and aggressive variant of infiltrating carcinoma is important because of its poor prognosis and high incidence of lymph node metastases.

Medullary carcinoma (MC) of the breast is characterized by large anaplastic cells and infiltration by benign lymphocytes. Patients with this pattern of breast carcinoma are considered to have a better prognosis than those with other histological subtypes. We reviewed cases of primary breast carcinoma that were surgically resected between 1990 and 2004. Of these, 13 cases of medullary carcinoma of the breast with lymphocyte infiltration were reported. Tests for CD3, CD4, CD8, CD20, CD56, TIA-1, and granzyme B were performed on paraffin sections. We found that the MC contained very few NK cells, as assessed by their reactivity with the CD56 antibodies. However, MC had a significantly greater percentage of CD3, CD8, TIA-1, and granzyme B lymphocytes infiltrating the stroma of the tumor. Furthermore, more CD8-positive than CD4-positive T-cell lymphocytes were present within the tumor cell nests in MC, as opposed to the proportion in usual ductal carcinoma. The infiltrating cytotoxic/suppressor T cells in MC represent host resistance against cancer, and the high grading of the T-cell infiltration could explain, in part, a key mechanism controlling the good prognosis for this type of tumor and solve the pathological paradox of MC.