The five most-read stories this week on Scope were:
Stanford’s Abraham Verghese honored as both author and healer: Stanford physician and best-selling author Abraham Verghese, MD, recently received a $250,000 Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities honoring his work combining medicine and literature.
Stanford physician leading efforts to track emerging polio-like illness in California children: A polio-like illness has afflicted a small number of children in California since 2012, causing severe weakness or rapid paralysis in one or more limbs. Keith Van Haren, an instructor of neurology and neurological sciences with Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, is the primary author of an abstract that describes five of the cases.
Simultaneous treatment for several food allergies passes safety hurdle, Stanford team shows: A team led by Kari Nadeau, MD, PhD, found that an experimental treatment already being widely tested for single food allergies, called oral immunotherapy, could be modified so that patients can be desensitized to multiple food allergens at the same time.
New Girl: Living the sitcom in medical school: In the latest installment of SMS Unplugged, first-year medical student Natalia Birgisson writes about her experiences going through medical school while living with two male roommates.
Dick Cheney on his heart transplant: “It’s the gift of life itself”: Former Vice President Dick Cheney talked about his heart transplant and life after near death in a 1:2:1 podcast hosted by Paul Costello, the medical school's chief communications officer.
And still going strong – the most popular post from the past:
What are the consequences of sleep deprivation?: Brandon Peters, MD, an adjunct clinical faculty member at the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine, explains how lack of sleep can negatively affect a person’s well-being in this Huffington Post piece.