A student-designed and student-led sexual-history-taking module for second-year medical students.

Background: Sexual history taking is a core clinical skill for all physicians, yet many medical schools do not adequately address this important topic within the curriculum. This article describes a sexual-history-taking module that was initiated, designed, and presented by 2nd-year medical students for their peers as part of the required Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM) course.

Description: As part of this module, a group of 2nd-year medical students developed a large-group presentation and small-group role play cases to enhance students' basic sexual-history-taking skills in challenging situations, teach ways to ask nonjudgmental questions, and introduce legal issues that may arise.

Breast-conserving surgery for breast cancer.

Surgical treatment of breast cancer has changed significantly in recent years. Fine-needle aspirations or core-needle biopsies can be used in the diagnostic process, thus avoiding scarring incisions. The preferred method of treatment for many women with early breast cancer is conservative surgical therapy (principally lumpectomy and axillary dissection) followed by breast irradiation.

Breast cancer diagnosis and screening.

Approximately 180,000 new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed annually, accounting for about 48,000 deaths per year in the United States. The screening guidelines for the diagnosis of breast cancer are continually changing. Because of increased awareness of the signs and symptoms of breast cancer and the use of screening mammograms, breast cancers are increasingly being diagnosed at earlier stages.

Hepatic glycolytic intermediates in fed and fasted rats after severe hemorrhage.

The responses of key liver carbohydrate intermediates to severe hemorrhage were investigated in fed and fasted young adult male rats. Forty per cent of intravascular blood was withdrawn and liver was sampled by freeze-clamp at 0, 0.25, 1.