Surgeon J

:).

I went in the operating room yesterday and performed VATS (Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery) and Open Thoracic Surgery on a porcine model (living, breathing 5 foot ish pig..under anesthesia of course).

IT WAS SO COOL!!

EES gives its employees the amazing opportunity to work with our surgical devices and actually get hands on experience using these devices in surgery. We have a large sales force that trains surgeons how to use our products, and for our sales training, sales reps practice by teaching employees. So a win-win situation.

I suited up in scrubs, and then the surgical scrubs, gloves and goggles. I had sales reps (in training) and one facilitator (actual surgeon) with me and another intern. First, I used a scalpel to make three inch-long incisions so I could insert my three trocars, which create ports through which I can insert my minimally invasive surgical tools like EnSeal . The other intern and I split duties on performing a bullectomy, a wedge resection (segmentectomy), and a lobectomy with the instructions/guidance of my two sales reps.

Then we opened up the pig, the facillitator took out some of her ribs so we would have more space to operate in. We did another lobectomy, then a pneumonectomy, pericardial window surgery, and a sympathectomy. We discovered that we accidentally punctured through the pig's lung during VATS, and so her lung was leaking air..which we were breathing in...which was bad since she was under anesthesia we were all starting to get headaches. Then the facillitator came in to save her because her heartrate was going down--in the process he accidentally cut her pulmonary vein and blood splurted out everywhere so the situation got worse. But we did some old fashioned sutres, and saved her.

Very cool experience--surgery for 4 hours!!

On a side note..

This morning was absolutely beautiful. I got up around 6am to run, and it was slightly foggy and the sun was a deep orange/red. The only thing that ruined my run was the fact that it's garbage day. I wanted to take a deep breath of the fresh morning air, and got a whiff of ickyness instead. I ended up cutting my usual 5mi down to 2.5mi (1 loop), because the stench was terrible and I seemed to be playing catch up with the garbage truck.