Although the number of patients requiring pediatric surgery is small, their diseases markedly vary. Therefore, in order to appropriately treat such patients, it is important to intensively perform a large number of surgeries for them in a single facility. We perform more than 700 surgeries annually in- and outside the hospital, and are expected to play a central role in developing new treatment methods and educating/training pediatric surgeons as a high-volume center. We treat patients from the Tokai and other distant districts through collaboration with related departments (such as the Departments of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Cardiovascular Surgery, Urology, Orthopedics, Ophthalmology, Otolaryngology, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Anesthesiology, Intensive Care, and Internal Medicine). With Doctor Uchida, who has the most extensive experience of pediatric endoscopic surgery in Japan, assigned in August 2013 we treat patients with congenital esophageal atresia, congenital lung diseases, biliary atresia, congenital biliary dilatation, and other disorders requiring high-level endoscopic surgery, while considering appropriate methods to reduce the burden on these children daily.

Up to the present, we have actively dealt with hepato-biliary-pancreatic diseases, such as biliary atresia, congenital biliary dilatation, and liver transplantation. We perform treatment, while not only improving surgical treatment methods, but also examining countermeasures against complications and the challenges of long-term follow-up. As part of such treatment, we are also engaged in living donor liver transplantation to be performed within the hospital through collaboration with the Department of Transplantation Surgery.

Our facility was designated as a General Perinatal Medical Center in Aichi Prefecture in April 2012. Such centers are medical institutions designated by municipalities to provide advanced medical services for pregnant females and newborns with severe conditions. The center consists of 2 major divisions: reproductive medicine/perinatal; and neonatal. The latter comprises the NICU and GCU with 12 and 24 beds, respectively, in addition to the Departments of Obstetrics, Pediatrics, and Pediatric Surgery which closely collaborate and regularly hold joint conferences. It provides surgical treatment for extremely-low-birth-weight infants and pediatric patients with congenital diseases requiring advanced management through collaboration with related departments and external medical institutions in the vicinity.

As a large number of hospitals deal with pediatric cancer despite the small number of patients with it, it is difficult for some hospitals to obtain extensive treatment experience in this area. As a solution, the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare designated a pediatric cancer hub hospital to centralize patients with pediatric cancer refractory to treatment and those requiring highly specialized treatment, and provide them with high-quality medical services in each district. Such hospitals are selected based on the results of evaluation by experts from comprehensive perspectives, covering medical service systems/equipment, training systems, and clinical research activities, as well as treatment outcomes. Having been evaluated the most favorably nationwide, our department was selected as a hub hospital for the Tokai/Hokuriku/Shinetsu Block in February 2013, together with Mie University Hospital. In line with this, Nagoya University Hospital aims to establish more appropriate medical service systems by further improving the quality of staff and equipment for pediatric cancer treatment and cooperating with other medical institutions within the block.

In January 2020, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine established a new department for analysis of rare and intractable cancers. This department aims to develop new diagnostic technologies for rare and intractable cancers that have previously been difficult to test using urinary tumor markers.
The Department of Pediatric Surgery, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, in collaboration with Hitachi Ltd., has been studying cancer testing with urinary tumor markers. As a result, cancer testing models based on comprehensive analysis techniques of urinary metabolites and extraction techniques of urinary tumor markers have shown that cancer patients can be distinguished from healthy individuals in a variety of carcinomas. In addition, we have newly developed a unique method called metabolite panel testing with multiple urinary tumor markers and found that benign tumors can potentially be extracted.
Through this new effort, this department aims to create a new society that enables early diagnosis of cancer and QoL of patients to be balanced, in collaboration with core hospitals nationwide.