Learned how to do valves today!

[YellowJacket!]

So, if I learned how to do valves, then why am I posting it in the OT forum?  Well, its the kind of valves I learned how to do....HEART valves.  And it was awesome!!
Part of the requirements for me going to Surgical PA school is that I shadow a PA for as many hours as I can.  On monday I watched a bypass surgery where the surgeon and PA use a blood vessel from the patients leg to create new vessels around the heart and "bypass" the blocked arteries in the heart.  It was cool.  But today, I got to watch valve replacement surgery and it was absolutely amazing.  Valve surgery is true "open heart" surgery and I actually got to look down into and inside a living persons heart.  It wasn't beating of course as the perfusion machine, or the heart-lung machine, was taking care of that.  I was pretty impressed by how minute the suture needles and sutures were, and that was on an adult.  They have another valve surgery scheduled on a child which scales everything down to 1/8th size!
Tomorrow I get to do "rounds" with the PA and follow her while she sees her patients.

David

[ColinthePilot]

That sounds interesting as hell! I would be worried about losing it though. I don't mind blood and guts but I prefer to stay away from them when it isn't necessary, and it rarely is in my line of work.

[h2olawyer]

Amazing stuff.  Not many folks get to see that.  Takes a strong constitution or 'different' mind set to maintain composure in those situations.  That's why I could never do domestic relations law - just don't have the constitution to stomach it.

H₂O

[Lucky]

Can i come watch? i'll bring the "Junior Mints"......

[kwells]

http://members.aol.com/PjSilly10/juniormint.wav

[YellowJacket!]

Can i come watch? i'll bring the "Junior Mints"......

heh heh heh.  One of the girls, a circulator nurse has a big bottle of rolaids that she keeps handy.  She says its good for her carpal tunnel.  Never heard of that.

As far as the gross stuff goes, everything is so "clinical".  Its weird, becasue I thought I was going to lose it before I got to watch my first surgery.  In fact, it was my biggest fear.  But, I didn't even come close.  The entire patient is draped from head to toe.  All you see is the 2x2 workspace on the chest and a narrow band down one of the legs.  Nothing else.  Of course, I know whats under it all becasue one of the first things we did was to completely wash the patient down in betadine before we draped him, but all that personalization seem sto melt away once everything is covered up.
I think I was more nervous the first time I started disassembling my Vision...seriously.
I would have to say though that the most profound part of the surgery was when the surgeon made the incision in the aorta to expose the aortic valve.  He said "after this, is the point of no return."  Meaning, once that valve was removed, there was no closing up until the job was done.

David

[YellowJacket!]

http://members.aol.com/PjSilly10/juniormint.wav

Heh heh heh  ;D ;D

I finally got the link to work by right clicking on it and choosing "save target as" then run once it downloaded.  ;D

David

[YellowJacket!]

One other observation:

It is amazing how you can tell the difference between smokers lungs and non-smokers lungs.  The patient on monday was a non-smoker and his lungs were peachy pink.  The patient today was 40 "pack year" smoker meaning he smoked on average one pack per day for 40 years. (could have also been 2 ppd x 10 years or 40ppd x 1 year)  His lungs were grayish brown.  yuck.

David

[Aelwulf]

Kudos on that. :) I'm not as bad as I used to be and can now watch operations on TV and such but still couldn't likely do the procedures myself.