Stanford University in California has also filled its positions and is currently accepting applications for the 2017-2018 positions. “We average five to six applicants a year, and have been fortunate to receive good applicants who later become academic sleep surgeons,” said Robson Capasso, MD, director of sleep surgery and assistant professor of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery at Stanford.
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March 2015Stanford offers two possibilities. A one-year program focuses on surgical treatment of obstructive sleep apnea through the department of otolaryngology. “While the applicant graduates with a sound fund of knowledge on all aspects of sleep disordered breathing diagnosis and management, it doesn’t provide board eligibility in sleep medicine, and allows only limited exposure to other sleep disorders,” said Dr. Capasso.
Stanford’s two-year training program, which provides board eligibility in sleep medicine, comprises one year focused on sleep surgery and another year in a regular sleep medicine fellowship, with less intense exposure to surgery.
The University of Pittsburgh’s sleep surgery rotation in the otolaryngology residency has inspired residents to consider a career in sleep that they would not have been exposed to in the past, said Ryan J. Soose, MD, director of the division of sleep surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). In each of the last two years, a UPMC otolaryngology resident was accepted into a prominent sleep medicine/surgery fellowship program.