Introduction: In Vietnam, gastric cancer (GC) ranks 4th in incidence and 3rd in mortality among all cancers. Most of the new GC cases in Vietnam were diagnosed at an advanced stage. Data on early gastric cancer (EGC) in Vietnam is very limited. This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence, endoscopic and histopathological characteristics of EGC among Vietnamese patients.

Methods: This is a retrospective study conducted at the University Medical Center of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from January 2014 to December 2019.  Electronic medical records of patients with EGC were reviewed to collect data regarding age, gender, endoscopic findings of EGC lesions (including location, size, and their type according to the Japanese classification of gastric carcinoma), and histopathological characteristics of these lesions based on the resected gastric specimens.

Results: Among 1666 patients with GC, there were 67 EGC cases, accounting for 4.0%. All of the patients diagnosed with EGC were older than 40 years. The detection rate of EGCs gradually increased during the study period. The EGC lesions were mostly located in the antrum-incisura angularis (73.1%) with a median diameter of 1.0 cm. Regarding macroscopic types, a majority of these lesions were classified as type 0-IIc (31.3%) and type 0-IIa+0-IIc (29.9%). The most common histological type of EGC was adenocarcinoma (82.1%) and poorly differentiated type (40.3%).

Conclusions: EGCs are mainly detected in individuals aged over 40 years. EGC lesions are commonly located in the antrum-incisura angularis and have characteristic features including the macroscopic and histological types.

Introduction: This study aimed to translate the 31-item Quality of Life in Epilepsy Inventory (QOLIE-31) into Vietnamese and validate the translation.

Methods: The inventory was translated through “forward – backward” translation, and culturally adapted for standardization. To ensure the reliability of the inventory, the internal consistency and the temporal consistency was determined. Clinical variables were tested for discriminant validity by comparing their scores.

Results: Cronbach’s alpha coefficient ranged from 0.91 to 0.57, with the lowest in the Overall quality of life subscale. Test-retest reliability showed high reproducibility with intra-class correlation coefficients ranging from 0.72 to 0.87 (p<0.001). The mean score of QOLIE-31 was 71.31. Further, the study used the statistical differences of QOLIE-31 scores in the drug-resistant group to show discriminant validity.

Conclusion: The Vietnamese QOLIE-31 is a reliable and valid instrument as proven by the statistical data and can be used to assess quality of life in people with epilepsy. 

Introduction: Body constitution (BC) plays an important role in preserving health and reducing risk of diseases depending on each person’s physical characteristics. Classification of BC is almost based on the Constitution in Chinese Medicine Questionnaire (CCMQ). In Vietnam, there is still no questionnaire survey to assess the BC. Therefore, this study aims to adapte and validate the Vietnamese version of CCMQ.

Methods: 2 phases of the study: the first phase constituted the translation with cross-cultural adaptation of CCQM into Vietnamese according to Guillemin et al; the second phase assessed the reliability and validity of the Vietnamese CCMQ version based on a cross-sectional study.

Results: Phase 1 formed the final Vietnamese CCMQ version in which face validity and content validity are incorporated. Seven traditional medicine practitioners confirmed the content validity (CVI: 57%–100%). The face validity of the scale is qualified. In phase 2, 455 participants aged 18 years old or older were enrolled in this study from 01/2021 – 06/2021 in Ho Chi Minh City. Regarding the criterion validity, the correlation coefficient between Vietnamese CCMQ and SF-36 was 0.67 for the Neutral type and -0.31 to -0.57 for the rest. The internal consistency varied from 0.70 to 0.83 measured by Cronbach’s alpha. The test-retest reliability varied from 0.63 to 0.90 for each of the 9 sub-scales and from 0.40 to 0.68 for each of the 60 questions.

Conclusions: The Vietnamese version of CCMQ has good reliability and validity, which provides a strong basis for future researches on BC of Vietnamese Traditional Medicine. 

Current pathophysiologic knowledge of achalasia suggests the important involvement of genetic predisposition. However, familial achalasia is very rare and most of the case reports in literature have shown an autosomal recessive pattern of inherence. We hereby report a case of familial achalasia with autosomal dominant pattern of inherence affecting ten members in three generations of a Vietnamese family.

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) has long been recognized as an important human pathogen causing many severe diseases. It is also a part of human normal flora with its ecological niche in the human anterior nares. This study focused on screening S. aureus nasal carriage in community and its relationship to human physiological and pathological factors which have not been studied in Vietnam previously. Two hundred and five volunteers in Ho Chi Minh City from 18 to 35 and over 59 years old both male and female participated in the study. Result showed that the prevalence of S. aureus nasal carriage in southern Vietnamese community was relatively low, only 11.2% (23/205), much lower than that in other international reports on human S. aureus. In addition, nasal carriage of the older age group (> 59 years old, 13.7%) was higher than that of younger age (18-35 years old, 10.4%). Other potential risk factors such as gender, career, height, weight, history of antibiotic usage, daily nasal wash, use of nasal medication sprays, acne problems, smoking and nasal problems showed no significant impact on S. aureus carriage. The obtained S. aureus nasal isolates were all sensitive to vancomycin. Lincomycin and tetracycline had low resistance rate with 4.3 % and 17.4 %, respectively. However, the isolates showed particularly high rate of multidrug resistance (54.2%) In summary, our data provided researchers an overview on S. aureus nasal carriage and antibiotic susceptibility profile of the community- isolated S. aureus in Vietnam. This would serve as valuable information on assessing risk of community-acquired S. aureus infections.