Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Three things

One of the surgeons came up to me today and told me that I needed to learn three new things about every surgery I attended so that by the end of the rotation, I would have accumulated a nice fund of information from which to draw.

Today, I had only one surgery--the ventral/umbilical/incisional hernia repair. This is what I learned.

1. Repair necessitates cutting through the falciform ligament
2. Mesh should have at least 5 cm around the hole to ensure stability
3. Suturing the fascia to the mesh helps with stability and hematoma development.

I also present three things from the OR discussion relating to the implementation of new CT scans/pat downs in airports and the needless radiation exposure/invasion of privacy that this will generate.

Surgeon: I shouldn't have to subject my children to this (pat downs) just because I don't want to expose them needlessly to radiation.
OR nurse: If it wasn't the government doing this, these would qualify for sexual abuse.

OR nurse: I'll take the pat-downs over the X-ray any day. Heck, I'll even do it twice.
Scrub tech: Yeah, and while she's getting them, she'll probably forget why she's even getting them in the first place.
OR nurse: Everything I've learned I owe to you.

Nurse: my (Caucasian) friend recently got patted down at the airport while a 25-year old fellow Arab passenger got through untouched.
Indian Doctor: In that case, I'll be expecting my rectal exam when I go through one of those lines.
Nurse: Yeah, you'll be like, "Hey, that's not your hand..."

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