Week 1: Interactions with Neuronsurgeons

After a couple days exploring New York City,  I officially met with my PI Dr. Schwartz on Wednesday. He gave me a typical doctor impression who is so busy that wouldn't talk more than he needed. However, he was very responsive and gladly introduced me to grad students working in his lab. He gave me a detailed weekly surgery schedule and tell me I m free to go watch anytime I want, which led to my first OR trip in this summer.

Technically this wasn't the first time I entered an OR. The true first time was when I was watching a sheep surgery and in the second time unfortunately I was the patient. As a result this was the first time I watched a human surgery and I was really excited. To my surprise, with the hospital ID, nobody questioned where I came from or why I was doing there. With the minimum information they were willing to give me scrubs and led me to the OR. People inside the OR and outside gave out completely different atmospheres. One is relaxing and helpful and the other one is intimidating and intense. After I entered the surgery room everyone seemed to be busy with their own job and no one even asked me who I was and I wasn't sure who I should introduce myself to. The only thing they kept telling me was not to touch anything sterile while I was too afraid to touch anything at all.

The first surgery I watched was an endoscopic brain tumor removal surgery through nose, which was interesting and I have never even heard of it. I had the impression that with brain tumor, open skull surgery seemed to be the only way. The surgery started by opening a tunnel from the nose to the thalamus by removing some of the cartilages and some of the bones. This "starting process" took about a couple hours and was accomplished by assistants and residents. Dr. Schwartz kicked in when starting to remove the tumor. Through the screens in the room I could see clearly the tumor and it looked exactly the same from what I have seen in documentaries, which made me wonder if all tumors throughout the entire body would have similar structure and shapes. The tumor removal seemed to be the easiest step at the end and there was no cutting with any knife as I imagined. Instead, they used a vacuum to separate tumor tissues with the rest of the brain and just used forceps to bring them out. The surgery closed by taking a piece of cartilage and fit it to block the tunnel from nose to the brain. Surprisingly this step took the longest time since the cartilage wasn't customized to the exact size of the tunnel opening but maybe someday biomedical engineering can solve this issue for example with 3D printed cartilage from Dr. Bonassar's lab.