Week 3

This week I was able to scrub into two joint replacement surgeries in the OR.  First, I watched a total hip replacement.  This was a fascinating surgery to watch as both the head of the femur and acetabulum were removed and replaced.  It was interesting to see how severely degraded the cartilage was on the removed femoral head and how the new parts were fitted specifically to the patients size.  Next, I was able to watch a total knee replacement.  This was also a very interesting surgery as both the femoral condyles and the tibial plateaus were replaced.  This patient had a severely valgus one.  When the tibial condyle was removed the cartilage had been completely worn on the lateral side while it look quite good on the medial side as a result of the unequal distribution of load.  Both of these surgeries were incredible to watch and the entire process could best be compared to carpentry.  It was awesome to be able to scrub into these surgeries and even participate in a little by helping operate the device which sucks the excess blood and synovial fluid from the surgical area.  Finally, a big takeaway from these surgeries was the intense care that was given to keeping to room sterile.  All people scrubbed into the surgery wore an additional sterile layer over their scrubs, two paris of sterile glove, and a helmet with a sterile visor cover.  Implant infection is one of the primary modes of implant failure so it makes sense that keeping a completely sterile surgical area is critical to the surgery's success.  Overall, watching these surgeries was an amazing experience and I can't wait to do it again!

Additionally, I was able to start a little lab work this week as well.  I helped with the analysis of some microCT data and finding image threshold values using Matlab.  This data was part of one of the implant infection studies in the lab that utilized a mouse tibial implant model.  This is a very interesting project and it was nice to be helpful to other people in the lab while still determining exactly what my summer research work will be focused on.