The five most-read stories on Scope this week were:
Stanford center launches Huffington Post blog on the “very mysterious process” of sleep: This week, Emmanuel Mignot, MD, PhD, director of the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine, introduced the Stanford Sleep Blog, which is being published by the Huffington Post. The blog will feature various experts from Stanford discussing presentations of real sleep medicine cases and scientific discussions.
The future of preventive medicine is in the freezer: This month, Stanford’s partner, the Cancer Prevention Institute of California, along with their colleagues in Southern California at the City of Hope National Medical Center and UC Irvine, embark on an epic research effort: asking more than 50,000 female teachers, retired teachers and school administrators all over California – participants for the last 16 years in the long-term follow-up California Teachers Study – to provide a blood sample to be stored away for future research. These “pre-diagnostic” blood samples are critical to future preventive medicine research, as they could represent the basis for blood tests or other means of ultra-early detection of disease.
My parents don’t think I’m smart enough for family medicine: One medical student’s story: A recent guest post by Raymond Tsai, a fourth-year Stanford medical student, about his decision to pursue a career in family medicine despite his parents’ objections.
The mystery surrounding lung-transplant survival rates: An October article in the San Francisco Chronicle offered a look at the challenges facing lung transplant patients and explored why a significant number don’t live beyond the five-year mark, despite improvements in survival rates.
California’s new law on dense breast notification: What it means for women: Effective this month, radiologists across California will be required by law to notify women when their mammography screening shows they have dense breast tissue. To help women understand the new law and how it affects their personal health, Stanford Hospital prepared this video.