Read article – Quotes Stewart Tepper, professor of neurology, about why patients and doctors so often don’t realize a person’s headaches are migraines, and instead believe they are caused by tension, stress or dehydration, or that they are “sinus headaches.” “Sinus headaches are an invention of Madison Avenue,” says Tepper. “If you go to Europe, they don’t know what you are talking about.”

Read article – Quotes William Weeks, professor of psychiatry, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, about a study he led that found that end-of-life medical care costs declined in the first five years of this decade.

Read article – Quotes James Bernat, the Louis and Ruth Frank Professor of Neuroscience and active emeritus professor of neurology and medicine, in an article that examines the various definitions of death and how they have changed over time, as life-extending technology has blurred the line between life and death. Bernat states that in most countries, being brain dead—meaning the whole brain has stopped working and cannot return to functionality—is the standard for calling death.

Read article – An article about how culinary medicine is an emerging field that teaches doctors to cook while also imparting practical nutrition information, which mentions that Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine provides culinary medicine workshops to medical staff members, patients, and the community through teaching kitchens. The article also mentions that Julia Nordgren, Geisel ’99, cofounded “The Doctor is In … The Kitchen” program at Stanford’s medical school, which meets one evening a week to learn about how culinary medicine is implicated in a real clinical story.

Read article – Quotes H. Gilbert Welch, professor of medicine and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, in an article about how the Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health System will offer DNA sequencing to 1,000 patients to test for genetic mutations that increases your risk for a treatable medical condition. Welch expresses concerns about the cascading effect of expensive and potentially harmful medical treatment when a genetic risk is identified. (Picked up by NPR and NHPR.)

Read article – Quotes Stewart Tepper, professor of neurology, about the FDA’s announcement of approval of Aimovig for the preventive treatment of migraine in adults. (Similar coverage in WPSD 6 and European Pharmaceutical Manufacturer.)

Read article – Quotes Samir Soneji, assistant professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, about a new study that found that young adults in the U.S. consume more smoke from hookah—water pipes with hot coals that heat tobacco in internal bowls—than from cigarettes. “Adolescents, young adults, and older adults alike often believe—incorrectly so—hookah is safe because the water somehow purifies and filters the smoke. This study demonstrates that hookah smoking contributes a substantial proportion of smoke and tar among dual hookah smokers and cigarette smokers,” says Soneji, who was not involved in the study.

Read article – Quotes Joanne Conroy ’77, CEO of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, about how having a multitude of partnerships—without owning any one—drives the hospital to its highest performance. Dartmouth-Hitchcock is a teaching hospital affiliated with the Geisel School of Medicine, and is also affiliated with several rural hospitals in the North Country and in Vermont. It also has long-standing relationships with the Boston hospitals. (Picked up by Seacoast Online.)

Read article – Quotes Paul Barr, assistant professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, who is leading a project at Dartmouth to create an artificial intelligence-enabled system that allows for the routine audio recording of conversations between clinicians and patients. The project, known as ORALS (Open Recording Automated Logging System) is designed to use natural language processing to automatically tag elements of the conversation deemed most valuable for patients. (Similar coverage in Becker’s Hospital Review.)

Read article – Quotes Stewart Tepper, professor of neurology, about a newly approved drug called Aimovig that’s offering hope for reducing the frequency of monthly migraine attacks. Aimovig is the first FDA-approved preventive migraine treatment in a new class of drugs that work by blocking the activity of calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), a molecule that is involved in migraine attacks. Aimovig targets that molecule’s receptor in your body. “When CGRP is released, outside of the brain, it causes inflammation and blood vessel dilation—the blood vessels get big—and that combination of inflammation and blood vessels getting big is the pain of migraine,” says Tepper, who was a clinical investigator in the Aimovig trials. (Picked up by WMUR and NBC 5. Similar coverage in The Wall Street Journal, Bustle, Refinery29, The Hindu.)