Surg 1- So there was a very cool surgery that several residents and other medical students were lined up for, but since we were on service with the prime surgeon we got first dibs. Its called a Roux-en-Y. It is a very cool and relatively rare surgery (not a whipple but you know). Anyhow I've included a picture so you can understand what was done. The cool part of this surgery is that they open the entire abdomen (this is very rare these days with all the laproscopy) so we get a firsthand view of the bowels. And though it means standing on a stool for 5 hours, you can actually see something. Now you might be asking why they did this surgery and I'll just give you the basics. The patient is a woman in her 40s and she has the worst reflux you've ever seen. She is dependent on PPIs to keep her from vomiting up all her food. Anyhow, they connect part of the small intestine to the esophagus. The surgeons leave the duodenum and stomach connected so the digestive enzymes can continue to used (we don't want to touch the pancreas if we can avoid it).
Surg 2- I was pulled out of the first surgery by a plastic surgeon who didn't have his own residents or students to help suture. I jumped at the chance. It was a breast reconstruction for a woman who had a mastectomy because of breast cancer. It was a brilliant surgery actually. He cut a 5 inch oval of tissue out of her back both tissue and muscle, he dissected the everything but 1 side (with the artery) and then created a tunnel through the armpit and pushed the back flap through it and filled the cut in her chest with it. It looked a lot like the picture above. It was like a real breast almost, minus the nipple. It was so clever and simple. Talk about cool. The sad thing is I never got to suture.
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