Vascular: the final surgery

My last day on the vascular surgery service was spent in the OR on an exceptionally engrossing case. It was a thoracic aorta to celiac/SMA bypass. Basically, we anastamose (attach) a bifurcated graft (tube that splits in two) proximally to the thoracic aorta (above the diaphragm) and distally to the celiac trunk and the superior mesenteric arteries (one leg of the graft to each artery. This means it's attached once to the aorta, splits, and then each leg attaches to one of the arteries). The patient was suffering from mesenteric ischemia (bowel that wasn't getting enough oxygen) due to atherosclerosis. Two of the three arteries supplying the gut were completly occluded, so those are the two we bypassed, improving blood flow to the gut and hopefully reduing his pain.

The attending was Dr. C, an eccentric Spaniard who is both an exceptional technical surgeon and an enthusiastic teacher. He would step back every 10 minutes or so during the dissection to describe the planes of anatomy he was crossing, ask a few reasonable questions and then have everyone stick their hand in and feel for key structures. The incision was along the ninth rib space in the retroperitoneum, just below the diaphragm. We dissected through the diaphragm to access the thoracic aorta; then through the pleural space while strategically collapsing the lung. This provided a beautiful view of the heart contracting, which is really quite captivating. This lateral incision also allowed us to leave the kidney alone, though we did have to mobilze the pancreas. Once the graft had been sewn in and we were closing, we reinflated the lung. It was pretty nifty to see the lung inflating and deflating with each breath while we closed the diaphragm. Dr. C let me close the skin, which involved no small number of subcuticular stitches (yay).

In the end, I really enjoyed my month on vascular. It almost makes me think I would enjoy being a surgeon, so we'll have to see how MIS goes. I wonder if the novelty of being inside someone would wear off and it would become tedious? You don't really follow your patients and you take care of such a compartmentalized portion of their health. On the other hand, you get to operate. The trouble with liking everything is that it becomes awfully hard to choose.