Serum I-FABP measurement is a non-invasive method that is potentially useful for the efficient identification of patients with acute abdomen who are at risk of small bowel ischemia.

A 73-year-old woman had a laparoscopic cholecystectomy for unexpected gallbladder cancer and 9 days later underwent both a liver bed resection and lymph node dissection. Four years later, she underwent a further resection of a port site recurrence of gallbladder cancer and no other site of recurrence was observed. The seeding of cancer cells during the removal of the resected gallbladder might have caused this tumor. This case may show that the port site recurrence did not necessarily indicate an incurable stage of the disease. In addition, an excision of the recurrent tumor also appeared to eliminate the disease in the patient.

Primary gastric endocrine cell carcinoma (ECC) is extremely rare. In general, when it is advanced, gastric ECC causes extensive ulceration (type 2) and invades or metastasizes to other organs, frequently to the liver and sometimes to the lungs or bones, and carries a poor prognosis. We herein report a 67-year-old man with advanced gastric ECC of extensive-polypoid shape (type 1) but without distant metastasis, who underwent total gastrectomy and treatment with oral tegafur-uracil (UFT), and showed no sign of recurrence 1 year later.

There are several weak points in the colonic blood supply, known as watershed areas, which result from incomplete anastomoses of the marginal arteries. These watershed areas are more vulnerable to ischemic injury than other parts of the colon. We report herein the cases of two patients who developed ischemic colitis well localized in the cecum, and in the rectosigmoid region at Sudeck's point, respectively. This report and our review of the literature suggest that watershed areas, including the splenic flexure, or Griffith's point, Sudeck's point, and the ileocecal region, are high-risk regions for the development of ischemic colitis.

No abstract