Week 1

For my first week of immersion I attended the OR's of a few different physicians as my clinical mentor Dr. Jason Spector of plastic surgery and reconstruction was on vacation this week. I was able to see three different hernia repairs, and one double mastectomy and bilateral DIEP flap. 

I think my favorite thing I saw was the double mastectomy and bilateral DIEP flap. From what I understand, this is a procedure in which both breasts were removed and fat from the stomach is used to reconstruct the breasts. The novelty of the DIEP flap is that it does not require the removal of muscle which allows patients to recover quicker. Additionally, blood vessels from the fat in the stomach are left in tact and "hooked up" to corresponding vessels in the breast. All in all, the procedure essentially amounted to a breast reconstruction and tummy tuck. It was a 10 hour surgery that required multiple doctors and departments, as this was not just a purely cosmetic procedure- the patient had metastatic breast cancer. The OR room was large and filled with many different medical professionals, but the thing that stuck out to me the most was that of the maybe 10-15 people in the room for the majority of the surgery that I saw, all of them were women. 

I really enjoyed the "behind the scenes" view of surgery- there were quite a few things that surprised me or things that I didn't expect or just hadn't really thought about. For example, everything has to be counted and inventoried to make sure that nothing is left in the patient. Of course in hindsight this makes a great deal of sense, but it was not something I had thought of as being important in the OR. I'm excited to see some more surgeries next week with Dr. Spector and spend some more time in the lab. Everyone that I've met has been incredibly friendly, helpful and kind and I'm very appreciative of all the Weill Cornell NYP students, physicians, nurses, staff, etc that I have met and that have made my first week a very informative and welcoming experience. Beyond my experiences with the hospital and clinical side of things, I am very much enjoying NYC- more than I expected honestly.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 1 - Samantha Bratcher

Image
Hi, everyone! My name is Samantha Bratcher. My clinical immersion is with Dr. Adam Talenfeld and Dr. Kyungmouk Steve Lee in the Interventional Radiology (IR) department. Although it's not very related to my field at the university (biomechanics/mechanobiology), the clinical experience has still been very interesting. The IR department is super friendly and all the clinicians have been very available to letting me shadow them. It's only been one week, but I've already learned a lot! Every day has been watching something new, from angioplasty to biopsy to embolization. I find it so crazy that they're able to thread a wire through someone's veins to practically any area of the body. It's always a bit crazy to watch. I got a video of a balloon angioplasty using this method. The balloon is inflated inside a person's veins to expand them and increase blood flow. The second video shows the veins and their quality. The rate at which the contrast dye flows through is...
Read more

Week One - Shenghao Tan

I am working with Dr. Mirella Salvatore from the infectious disease division. My research project will revolve around associations of COVID 19 patient clinical characteristics with their hostresponses throughout their hospitalization and recovery.   On the patient care side I have been following Dr. Ole Vielemeyer in ID consultation. A large part of the round is to discuss the choice of antibiotics, itsdosage and duration from lab results and examination reports. Some of the cases this week have been quite complicated and chronic; therefore, joint effort were required to provide adequate treatments. One patient had to battle both Crohn's disease and histoplasmosis, where the immunosuppressant and antibiotics used must be carefully considered to treat the histoplasma and maintain some immune system function, while not severing the GI tract. A part of medical care I learned that I haven't considered much of is the inpatient - outpatient transition: how is the treatments adjusted ...
Read more