Week 7: This is not a goodbye, only “hasta luego”. (Josue)

It is hard to conceptualize the impact that the Summer Clinical Immersion Program has had in my life as a graduate student and future contributor to the field of biomedical engineering. These past weeks have served as a catalyst to rediscover my passion for the advancement of medicine and science. I feel extremely thankful for being able to experience clinical research in ways that were impossible to envision before coming to Weill Cornell Medical College. The professionalism, compassion, and willingness of medical doctors, scientist, and engineers to share their knowledge and expertise have been an instrumental part of the journey.

Furthermore, being immersed in the hospital setting for six consecutive weeks gave me the opportunity to be exposed to the entire spectrum of the medicine. By shadowing Dr. Stein on the clinic, I learned about the importance of preventive healthcare and the impact that personalized medicine could have in patients worldwide in the future. Although my interaction with the patients was limited to an endocrinologist stand point of view, I realized that many life-threatening health conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, if prevented, can drastically improve the outcome of patients with hormonal and skeletal-specific complications.

Moreover, the rheumatology and metabolic bone grand rounds at the Hospital for Special Surgery were also monumental parts my personal experience during the program. I was astonished to see the collaborative work of doctors and their willingness to get outside of their comfort zone by asking other physicians about cases that were beyond their level of expertise. Furthermore, undoubtedly, my favorite part of the program was entering the OR to see multiple orthopedic surgeries treating a vast range of conditions from scoliosis to advance osteoarthritis and degenerative joint disorders.

From NYC, I take memories imprinted on my heart from its beautiful scenery, magnificent architecture, wonderful culinary options, and fast-paced lifestyle. Upon my return to the Ithaca campus, I am committed to maintain ongoing communication with Dr. Stein and potentially collaborate with her research team in future projects.

Lastly, I want to express my profound gratitude the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering and Weill Cornell Medical College for making this summer an unforgettable experience for all of us.

Josue




       





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week7

With the end of our summer immersion approaching, I feel sad to say goodbye to all the persons I've met in the hospital during this summer. The past 7 weeks has been very fulfilling and exciting to me, and I will never forget my experience here. As a student will electrical engineering background, I never thought that I can be able to go to a real operation room in the hospital and observe doctors operating on surgeries. But in the past 7 weeks, I was able to go to OR every week, and there's always surgery techniques that are impressing to me. Beside clinical experience, I also had a research project, automatic segmentation of zebra fish neuron images. As I have presented in my previous bloggers, for my project, I have tried several different algorithms. The first is simple thresholding. It is usually used as a preprocessing step in image analysis. The second method is watershed algorithm. It works pretty well, but, it's very sensitive to noise, resulting in over segmenta...
Read more

Week 5: Prostates & Autopsies

Image
This was a fun and interesting week! The prostate biopsy chip slides from last week were evaluated, and more testing was done. On Wednesday and Thursday, two people from the company were here to do some trials with the new chips. This time, real prostate biopsies were taken, and sections were used to evaluate the quality of the tissue. Each chip holds up to 6 biopsies inside the little grooves. The color of the dividers (blue, yellow, and black) orient each sample to distinguish where in the prostate each biopsy came from. It also allows six biopsy cores to be placed on one slide which saves space and resources [1]: Instead of all 12 of the slides on the left (although that is a little excessive), you just need two with the BxChip. It also seems to keep the cores flat and aligned. This is what a magnified core might look like [2]: The tissue fits right inside the little grooves (although it can be slightly difficult to get them in there), and then the whole chip can be ...
Read more

Week 5: Spine Surgeries and Excel Files

Image
On the context of my clinical research project, I continue extracting the different demographic and skeletal specific factors for the patients of our study. I was also able to attend an additional spinal fusion surgery under the supervision of Dr. Kim at HSS. During this week, I was particularly interested in the surgical equipment that he uses for the procedure. Dr. Kim uses the Zimmer Biomet Vitality Spinal Fixation System for his spine surgeries. The components of the system are made from medical grade titanium alloy and medical grade cobalt chromium alloy. In summary, these were the main steps of the process for installing the screws into the patient spine which, personally, was the most interesting part of the procedure.  Initially, the pedicle area of the vertebrae is localized, and an insertion is made in the cortical shell. Then, a probe, included with the system, creates a pathway for the polyaxial pedicle screw to be inserted into the pedicle and the vertebral body. ...
Read more