My Cardiac Surgery experience

It has been quite a while since my last post. I've been busy in so many ways. Doing my Sub-Internships and electives for the fourth year of medical school. Applying for General Surgery Residency has also taken a big chunk of my time and energy; it's an arduous task but I'm up to it! I'll spill more on the Application cycle on a later posting, it deserves a post of its own.



So my 4th year of Medical School started with Cardiothoracic surgery sub-internship (Acting internship). I was previledge to work with world famous Cardiac Surgeon, Dr. Bartley Griffith of the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), where I attend medical school. I also worked with other very skilled and efficient surgeons, fellows. Throughout my month in Dr. Griffith's service I was able to go on 1 organ procurement trip(organ harvesting) followed by implantation at the UMMC. I took part in 2 tranplant procedures ( 1 heart and 1 lung). Talking about surgeons who work all round the clock, oh boy these cardiac surgeons do! From heart valve repairs to heart and lung transplants, they all do it at ANY time of the day, just whenever their service is needed. I came out of the rotation with tremendous respect and love for Cardiac surgeons and surgery.

The organ procurement trip involved going to New Jersey to harvest a heart from a man in his 40's who was had been healthy but just passed away suddenly. We left the UMMC campus at about 5pm. I was with another fellow medical student, a Cardiothoracic fellow and a Cardiac attending surgeon. We were driven to the BWI airport where we waited for about 45minutes. After this wait, a small air plane landed in an entirely different area than those going on regular trips. Even our waiting area was quite different, not the regular waiting area. We hopped on the plane and in 45 minutes we arrived at the New Jersey airport where another vehicle had been waiting. The driver took us to the hospital where we procured the heart. At about 1am, we were on our way back to UMMC. As we immediately got out of the vehicle infront of UMMC, I carried the box containing the heart. It had been sitting in ice for about 45mins -1hr. Our aim was to mininize the time before implantation into the recipient. Just as the ambulance was making the last turn into the UMMC the fellow, who was sitting next to me, said that "as once as the vehicle stops, get the box and go as fast as you can to the OR." Very excited that I had been entrusted with someone's life basically, I could feel my heart race in anticipation of the task ahead. Just before that ambulance came to a stand still, I was already in a knee-chest postion, next to the box which was close to the vehicle door. As it stopped, I immediately carried the box, held it against my chest, and set running. There was a security guard who was standing at the main entrance but he quickly gave way, maybe b/c she saw the ambulance. I ran to the elevators, placed and box down and hit "up" and at this time, the rest of the crew joined me at the elevators as I was waiting. Then came an empty elevator and the next minute or so we were on the second floor (where our Operating rooms (OR) are). I dashed out of the elevator and headed towards the main OR entrance when the fellow shouted "you don't have your hat on Anselm" (in order to get into the OR, it is the policy in all ORs that I've been to, to put on head covers - this's what he was referring to). At this time, my fellow classmate had put his head cover on so I handed the irreplaceable box to him. As I was putting my head cover on, my classmate continued to take the box into the OR. Then we went to work and I and my classmate basically assited throughout the process. I retracted and did some cutting here and there. It was about a 5-6 hour procedure and I only was able to leave the hospital at about 11am that morning. I had basically spent about 30hours straight in the hospital. At one point I was asked to go home but I didn't want to leave! I had to experience the entire procedure and I won't trade this experience for anything else in the world.

Other very intersting experiences were the repair of an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA), a pseudo-aneurysm, Co-arctation of the aorta an infant ( I wasn't scrubbed for this, just watched), Robotic coronary artery bypass using the Da-Vinci robot.

After spending an extremely enjoyable month with Dr. Griffith's service, my next stop was at MAYO clinic in Rochester, MN where I met and worked with world-class surgeons. I'll talk about this in my next posting.

Thanks for sharing in this experience.
Soon