The week was good but short due to the July 4th weekend, however it was definitely full of progress on the research side of things. We finally have all of the equipment that we need for the intradiscal pressure measurements on rat caudal intervertebral discs. Testing should begin next week and continue for the duration of immersion term if all goes well with the first few sets of samples. Also, MRI and X-ray images of the completed set of IVD replacement rats are done which means I can begin the disc height measurements for the validation study on disc height as a proper measure of disc health in research and the use of MRI v X-Ray. The work should be very exciting, especially since both projects feed directly into my research in Ithaca.
Tuesday and Wednesday this week were clinic days. Many diagnoses were stenosis and herniated discs, with nothing too out of the ordinary. Interesting cases were presented during a large case conference between the New York Presbyterian group and the HSS group. There is a great deal of consideration that goes into diagnosing patients, especially when it comes to surgery type and medical history. There was a patient case presented with scoliosis and multiple level spondylolisthesis that was addressed with surgery. If the surgical approach was not complicated enough with the extensive spinal malformation, there were also medical history factors including a large arterial graft that needed to be avoided in order to keep the patient safe. This limited the types of procedures that the surgeons could use since anterior entry was not an option. Later in the week, I watched a few procedures including multiple discectomies in which a portion of the disc is removed. During the surgery, Dr. Hartl pointed out the damaged discs and the defect created during the removal process. This is exactly what my research is trying to address so it was very informative to see how it translates to the large scale in a human disc.
I am excited to get moving on the research projects and possibly branch out into more othopaedic surgeries next week.
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