Week 2 - Brandon

The past week went well, definitely faster than the first week since I was more into the groove of things this week. On Monday, I saw a completely different side of this clinical experience in that we spent time watching a surgeon perform total disc replacements on rats. My mentor is on our research team in Ithaca so the rat tail implants were made before I came down so I got to see them from the beginning directly through implantation and I am also getting to follow along with post-op observations (MRI and X-ray) which is awesome. As one of my projects for the summer, I will be validating MRI as a means of measuring different intervertebral disc metrics using the scans that we take of the implanted/ control groups, so it was great it see everything happen from conception to get a full picture of the research. After the rat tail surgeries, I was able to go to the OR and watch Dr. Härtl perform a surgery and also some clinical patient visits. Tuesday and Wednesday are always patient visit days, and are often the most non-stop. The past week seemed to be a pretty even-mix of new patients and follow ups, with a few very interesting cases spattered throughout the days. Many of the interesting cases were presented at a spine conference in which surgeons, residents, fellows and students come together and brainstorm how a case should be handled or summarize a previous surgical case. This was a great way to understand the surgical though process, gain some vocabulary and see what other surgeons are up to. I was back in the OR on Thursday and Friday. There were some different types of surgeries happening in other OR rooms, including my first 3-D displayed surgery in which they removed a tumor in the pituitary gland of a patient. In the area of spinal surgery there was some complicated surgeries as well. One was a multi-level ALIF (anterior lumbar interbody fusion) procedure that was more involved (and more invasive) than the prior XLIF procedures. I also witnessed Dr. Härtl remove a tumor in the upper cervical region of a patient's spine (on the side of the posterior lateral ligament) that was compressing the spinal cord. The second week is an interesting point since many of the surgeries done were on patients that I may have seen during the previous week in pre-op visits. I am looking forward to what this next week has in store and to getting moving on my research projects.