Week 2: First time to watch surgeries

Fortunately, the issue with an account for scrubs was cleared quickly, so I was able to observe two surgeries.

http://www.houstonmethodist.org/orthopedics/where-does-it-hurt/ankle/ankle-fusion/
The first surgery was "ankle arthrodesis," also known as ankle fusion, which is to remove articular cartilage between bones, fibula, tibia, and talus and combine together. The ankle arthrodesis is usually performed in order to alleviate pain and maintain or improve the movement of a patient. In the case of severe ankle arthritis, this surgery is recommended since it takes long time to get recovered and could limit some activities.There were total three clinicians specialized in each step for this surgery. The first impression of the OR was that the atmosphere was natural. For example, they played songs, and sometime they made some jokes to make themselves relax, not too tense. Of course, they were serious during the surgery as well.


http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00422
The second surgery was microfracture. Microfracture is one of the surgeries to treat articular cartilage defects. Cartilage is an immuno-privileged region due to avascularity, but also has limited blood supply leading to poor self-healing process. This, after removig the damaged cartilage, surgeons make small fractures on subchondrial bone region for better blood supply. All these procedures were performed using arthroscope. After creating the fractures, the bone plugs from the patient's calcaneous bone were slightly smashed and placed into the legion, covered by fibrin glue and bone marrow aspirate concentration (BMAC).

Also, by shadowing Dr. John Kennedy, I had a lot of chances to see him examing patients and choosing proper treatment. The schdedule seemed crazy since there are usually 16 to 18 patients a day. Through shadowing, I could learn not only anatomy or biological knowledge but also how clinical system works.

For the following weeks, I hope that I can see and learn as many thing as I have done.

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