A case of a 47-year-old woman with pulmonary varix is reported herein. Saccular dilatation of the inferior pulmonary vein resembled a pulmonary perihilar mass which could not be palpated at the time of thoracotomy. Aneurysmal dilatation of the pulmonary vein, otherwise known as pulmonary varix, is rare. Only 71 such cases, including 17 cases in Japan, have been reported. Pulmonary varices may be classified into three types, namely: saccular type, tortuous type and confluent type. Most of the varices seen in patients with valvular disease have been of the confluent type (62 per cent), however tortuous type varices have also been seen in some cases (19 per cent). Pulmonary venous hypertension may be one of the major causes of confluent type pulmonary varices as regression of pulmonary varices after mitral valve replacement has been reported. None of the saccular type cases, however, were accompanied by valvular disease. This indicates that local factors may also be an important cause of saccular type varices.

For two-dimensional rectangular cylinder with the side-ratio of 4 (B/D ¼ 4, B: along-wind length, D: cross-wind length), two different types of vortex-induced excitation, which are motion-induced vortex excitation, i.e. shear layer instability related-vortex excitation, and Ka´rma´n vortex excitation, were observed in both heaving and torsional motion. Also, the role of vortex-generation on the torsional flutter instability was experimentally investigated by changing the rotation axis in the state without/with a splitter plate in the wake. The two different kinds of vortex-induced excitations was confirmed in the close reduced wind speed region, and the vortex-induced excitations could play an important role as triggering of torsional flutter instability when Scruton number is small enough. Furthermore, the flow pattern around the cylinder during torsional motion drastically changes between the low and high-reduced velocity. r

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The purpose of this study was to clarify whether or not body armor would protect the body of a swine model using a blast tube built at National Defense Medical College, which is the first such blast tube in Japan. Seventeen pigs were divided into two groups: the body armor group and the non-body armor group. Under intravenous anesthesia, the pigs were tightly fixed in the left lateral position on a table and exposed from the back neck to the upper lumbar back to the blast wave and wind with or without body armor, with the driving pressure of the blast tube set to 3.0 MPa. When the surviving and dead pigs were compared, blood gas analyses revealed significant differences in PaO2, PaCO2, and pH in the super-early phase. All pigs injured by the blast wave and wind had lung hemorrhage. All 6 animals in the body armor group and 6 of the 11 animals in the control group survived for 3 hours after injury. Respiratory arrest immediately after exposure to the blast wave was considered to influence the mortality in our pig model. Body armor may have a beneficial effect in protecting against respiratory arrest immediately after an explosion.