Core Practical Objectives: a means to standardize the 4th-year emergency medicine clerkship.

Background: Core Practical Objectives (CPOs) are clinical emergency medicine (EM) experiences (including suggested number of patient encounters) that students use to self-direct clerkship progress.

Purpose: This study investigates feasibility of implementing EM clerkship CPOs, describes characteristics of students fulfilling CPO guidelines, and relates CPO completion to outcome measures (exam scores and grades).

Methods: Cross-sectional research was conducted comparing students completing and not completing CPOs by gender, month of rotation, total patients evaluated, clerkship exam score, and final grade.

Practice makes perfect: progressive improvement of laparoscopic pyloromyotomy results, with experience.

Introduction: Pyloric stenosis can now be treated effectively with laparoscopic pyloromyotomy (LP). Few large outcome studies have been published regarding the laparoscopic technique. In this paper, we describe our experience with the first 185 consecutive LPs.

Metastatic breast cancer presenting as linitis plastica of the stomach.

Early detection and treatment of breast cancer, leading to longer survival, has revealed the natural history of this disease process. Linitis plastica of the stomach is a potential long-term sequela of metastatic breast cancer. Here we present a case of metastatic breast cancer presenting as linitis plastica, as well as the treatment algorithm for this rare clinical entity.