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Suicide is one of the common severe accidents occurring in hospitals. This study aimed to investigate inpatient suicides simultaneously in medical and psychiatric settings in a large number of hospitals and to examine the prevalence of common suicide risk factors, related symptoms in inpatients who had died by suicide and the differences in inpatient suicides between both settings. We conducted a survey of hospitals in Japan that belonged to the nationwide standard-setting and accrediting body. The questionnaire covered the: 1) presence or absence of inpatient suicides in each hospital from 2012 to 2015; 2) number of inpatient suicides; 3) method, location, and timing of inpatient suicides; and 4) characteristics of inpatients who died by suicide. In total, 529 hospitals reported 262 inpatient suicides during the 3-year period: 131 were in medical settings and 131 were in psychiatric settings. The prevalence of common suicide risk factors was frequent in inpatient suicides. Inpatients had characteristics and suicide risk factors specific to those settings such as worsening of physical health in medical settings. Therefore, recognizing common suicide risk factors and understanding differences in inpatient suicides between both settings are important to prevent inpatient suicides.

Suicide is a major cause of death among inpatients with schizophrenia. However, there are only a limited number of surveys of suicide among such patients, especially in Asia. Therefore, we conducted a multi-institutional survey on suicide death among inpatients with schizophrenia in Japan. We investigated the characteristics of patients with schizophrenia who died by suicide during hospitalization in psychiatric wards, and simultaneously, those of patients with depression. Forty-five suicides of patients with schizophrenia occurred in 27 hospitals, and 46 suicides of patients with depression occurred in 33 hospitals. Hanging was the most common suicide method in both diagnostic groups. More than half of the patients with schizophrenia had histories of suicide attempts, although there was no significant difference in previous suicide attempts or self-harm between both diagnostic groups. Medical staff should confirm whether inpatients with schizophrenia have such histories. In this study, there was no significant difference in characteristics between inpatients with schizophrenia or depression. In order to prevent suicides of patients with schizophrenia during hospitalization, nonspecific suicide attempt prevention needs to be undertaken, such as ensuring comprehension of the general risk factors of suicide among medical staff.

Mycotic celiac artery aneurysm following infective endocarditis is extremely rare and, to our knowledge, only four cases have been reported in the literature to date. We describe the case of a 60 year-old man who developed a mycotic aneurysm of the celiac artery, which was detected by computed tomography (CT) following an episode of infective endocarditis. He successfully underwent endovascular isolation and packing of the aneurysm using N-butyl cyanoacrylate (NBCA) with embolization coils.

We fabricated a biosensor based on a silicon nanowire field-effect transistor (SiNW FET) with a Si3N4 gate insulator for highly sensitive detection of target biomolecules. The fabricated SiNW FET acted as an ion-sensitive FET that could detect the charge density in solutions flowing along the gate surface by responding to the pH of the solutions. The SiNW FET also detected charged protein molecules in solution, suggesting that our device can be used in highly sensitive, label-free biosensing.

In relation to clinical and histological findings of gingiva, local microcirculatory system of hamster gingiva was studied on its morphology and the blood flow according to the 133Xe clearance method under the four different thermal irritations.The results were as follows:1) No change on the morphology of blood vessels and the amount of blood flow was observed in the control group, 37°C (preliminary experiment) group, which exhibited no abnormal clinical and histological findings of gingiva.2) 45°C group exhibited similar findings to the control group, i. e. no changes were observed in its clinical and histological findings of gingiva and the morphology of blood vessels as well as the amount of blood flow.3) 55°C group showed normal gingival findings clinically, however, a slight disturbance was observed histologically, and morphological changes of blood vessels together with the persistent decrease of blood flow were recognized.4) 65°C group and 75°C group showed considerable disorders on clinical and histological findings of gingiva and, in accordance to those, morphological changes of blood vessels and the decrease of the amount of blood flow were observed.From these results, it may be concluded that the amount of blood flow decreases when gingiva is suffered from some pathologic conditions such as inflammation. Even in the clinically normal gingiva, the changes in blood flow were found when pathologic conditions were observed histologically.