Pharmacist's Intervention Considering the Prognosis for a Terminal Cancer Patient: A Case Report.

Prognostic prediction has been reported to affect the decision of doctors and non-physician health care providers such as nurses, social workers, pastors, and hospice volunteers on the selection of appropriate medical interventions. This was a case of a 65-year-old woman who presented with a poor oral intake. The patient had a history of sigmoid colon cancer with abdominal wall metastasis and peritoneal dissemination. On the day of admission, nausea, anorexia, and malaise were noted, requiring immediate intervention. The patient's prognosis was predicted using the Palliative Prognostic Index. The pharmacist suggested the use of dexamethasone tablets in order to alleviate the patient's symptoms. Indeed, the administration of dexamethasone alleviated the symptoms of nausea, loss of appetite, and malaise. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case report to demonstrate that prognosis prediction is important not only for other medical staff but also for pharmacists when deciding the need to initiate a treatment and continue such treatment, and when providing pharmacist interventions.

A rare case with a solitary fibrous tumour of the colon and an epithelioid angiomyolipoma of the kidney.

Solitary fibrous tumour is a soft tissue tumour composed of a subset of fibroblast-like cells and frequently needs immunohistochemical staining for final diagnosis. Epithelioid angiomyolipoma is a variant of angiomyolipoma but characterized by the absence of both adipocytes and abnormal blood vessels. We introduce a very rare case with the combination of these two tumours. A Japanese female patient without significant symptom was hospitalized and operated due to multiple uterine leiomyomas. During the operation, the surgeons found another tumour attaching to serosa of sigmoid colon. This tumour was resected and interpreted as solitary fibrous tumour, suspicious of malignancy. After 13 months of treatment, she was hospitalized again due to hematuria. The doctors detected a tumour in her right kidney. After consultation, laparoscopic right nephrectomy was done. The pathological result of this tumour was epithelioid angiomyolipoma. This is the first report on this very rare combination of tumours with extensive immunohistochemical demonstration of both tumours. Hereby, we review clinical information and histopathological findings together with discussion on each tumour.