Week VII: OR and new surgery techniques

This week I was able to shadow Dr. Phillip Stieg in the OR on a craniotomy for brain tumor removal. The surgery lasted around five hours. This was the first craniotomy surgery I saw during my stay in the summer. To reduce the pressure when opening the brain, they first drained the spinal cord. A headframe is used to stabilize the head and then craniotomy was performed with the help of an infrared microscope. I was surprised at how infrared microscope has already had such a significant role in the clinics. My next step would be to investigate further on how the IR microscope works in the clinical settings. The surgery could not be successfully performed with the great innovation and advance in engineering. Another significant engineering object I was interested in was the brain navigation system. It was a 3D reconstruction system customized by the actual MRI scans of the patient and then applied in surgery to help locate the surgical site. I was informed this was a core of the brain surgery because only with the navigation did the surgeons know exactly where they were. After the removal of the brain tumor, a duraplasty (using a soft tissue from the belly to close the window) was done. During the surgery, around ten doctors/nurses were involved. Some were in charge of reading the heart beats, blood pressures, etc. while some were preparing the equipment for the next steps. As it is, OR is always busy.

An exciting news I heard from the Friday's weekly meeting was that Dr. Michael Kaplitt became the first in New York to perform an essential tremor removal in a patient's brain with focused ultrasound. I was impressed because I did not realize the ultrasound wave could go so deep into a human brain and still maintains a high enough intensity to disrupt a tremor! Moreover, I learned ultrasound could break the blood-brain barrier so that gene therapy could be enabled to help modify the function of the diseased brain. With so many useful applications ahead, I was not only excited but hoped I could investigate the physical principles behind. I feel the interaction of neuroscience, physics, and engineering was more than interesting now, but with more realistic expectation that it could ultimately help in a way people never imagined to be true before.

For my research, I started to work on searching the literature on the comparisons of MRI images of the MS patients. A lot of papers are waiting to be uncovered and read. I hope I could speed up my searching and make all the searching efforts with logic and required procedure.  As it's to the end of the immersion, I will try to put all of my efforts in the research and hope for the best end of the final week.