Nearly every week since 1988, cancer patients and families visiting Vanderbilt University Medical Center have been able to count on a comforting routine — at least one morning per week they are greeted by the same smiling volunteer who dispenses a dose of friendship along with coffee, snacks and advice about how to navigate the sprawling Medical Center campus.

The kidney can mediate its own repair through proliferation of resident immune system cells.

A new study comparing outcomes among prostate cancer patients treated with surgery versus radiotherapy found differences in urinary, bowel and sexual function after short-term follow-up, but those differences were no longer significant 15 years after initial treatment.

Michael Petracek, M.D., has been named interim chair of Vanderbilt’s Department of Cardiac Surgery.

Within StarPanel, the medical records system used at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, patient care team members each have an electronic message “basket,” making it simple to store messages and link them to medical records.

Vanderbilt University’s Lee Limbird, Ph.D., has received one of pharmacology’s highest honors — the 2013 Julius Axelrod Award from the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET).

Vanderbilt is expanding its role in the future treatment of pediatric hydrocephalus by recruiting Chevis Shannon, MBA, MPH, Dr.PH., to serve as director of the Vanderbilt Pediatric Neurosurgery Clinical Research Initiative.