Yuki Yoshimatsu

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr Yoshinosuke Fukuchi and the APSR for granting me such a meaningful award. My mission in medicine is to enable a comfortable and purposeful life for patients and their families. I chose to specialize in respiratory medicine to alleviate symptoms of breathlessness, which seemed to me as one of the most difficult physical symptoms. During my training at Yodogawa Christian Hospital, I realized that breathlessness causes many other crucial disabilities, such as swallowing, eating, and living at home. This is how I became involved in aspiration pneumonia.

For this APSR 2021 Congress, I presented two studies in our continuous study of aspiration pneumonia. The poster titled “Careful history taking detects underlying disorders of initially unknown causes of aspiration pneumonia”, was the first step. This retrospective study revealed that in 30.7% of those with suspected aspiration pneumonia with an unknown cause, a cause of aspiration was newly diagnosed later during hospitalization. This highlighted the importance of careful history taking with regards to neurological, gastrointestinal, and drug-induced disorders in elderly patients with pneumonia.

However, in reality, there is no guidance on how to efficiently screen for these causative conditions. This led to our second study (the awarded oral presentation): “Development and Implementation of an Aspiration Pneumonia Diagnostic Algorithm for the practical application of the JRS guidelines”. The JRS guidelines provide a list of risk factors of aspiration and pneumonia. We developed a practical checklist to put these lists into practice. Its implementation enhanced the rate of swallow screening, cause investigation, and preventative measures such as vaccination and discontinuance of risky drugs. We hope to perform further studies to improve the algorithm.

At the congress, many people kindly listened to my presentations, and the questions asked by the chairperson enabled me to consider further directions of this quest.

I am deeply grateful to my mentors at Iizuka Hospital Department of Respiratory Medicine, Hyogo Medical College Department of Physiology, and University of Barcelona, for guiding me in the study. I also appreciate the members of Iizuka Hospital Department of Respiratory Medicine and General Medicine for cooperating with the implementation phase.

As I am always encouraged by the warm atmosphere of the annual APSR Congresses, it is a pity that we couldn’t gather for an onsite congress. However, I appreciate and applaud the organizing committee at Juntendo University for holding such an educational and encouraging congress despite the difficult situation with the historic pandemic. The hybrid congress provided more learning opportunities for us, by the live sessions we could participate in our own offices, and the on-demand sessions we can listen to whenever and however many times we wish.

Finally, no words could express how meaningful it is to me, to be awarded by Dr Yoshinosuke Fukuchi, who founded the basis of current practices of aspiration pneumonia, among other clinical progress in respirology. With this utmost gratitude and encouragement at heart, I hope to strive towards my mission for a better tomorrow.