Chapter 670 - 670: Surgery (1/2)
Doctor Lan Cai Duan asked two of the first year residents to shadow Professor Guan in a surgery to remove the tumour in a ten year old girl. She had been suffering for about one year. So it was her turn.
Children with brain or spinal cord tumours required special care because their brains and bodies were still developing. The treatment would depend on many factors including the location of the brain or spinal cord tumour, whether it is benign or malignant, the child's age and general health, the parents' preferences regarding treatment options or the risks associated with a particular treatment.
Professor Guan was a pediatric neurosurgeon who specialized in brain and spinal cord tumours in children. Yu Qi was happy to get this chance to see Professor Guan got in action.
Doctor Lan Cai Duan was Professor Guan's assistant in this surgery. As Doctor Lan Cai Duan requested two of the first year resident, one was Yu Qi, another one was Ah Kean.
Ji Suk Ye was very angry when she knew about this. She went to see Doctor Lan Cai Duan about this. She wanted to protest the choice. Doctor Lan Cai Duan said that it was Professor Guan's choice to choose Yu Qi and Ah Kean.
Since her protest to Doctor Lan Cai Duan was not successful, she went to her uncle in the top management to make Professor Guan to change his choice. However, her uncle immediately rejected.
Her uncle did not dare to mess with Professor Guan. He was a strong headed man. Because of that, Ji Suk Ye just could glare at Yu Qi and Ah Kean angrily.
The day arrived. They followed the procedures that needed to be done to enter the surgery theatre. Cleaning the hands, wearing the surgery gown, wearing the gloves and a face mask.
Senior Nurse Gong read the detail of the patient loud enough to be heard by everything in the surgery theatre. It had to be done in order to make sure the everything was correct.
The surgery that needed to be done was enough and it was a right patient. It would be horrible if they were something wrong. After that, everyone introduced themselves.
It was Craniotomy Surgery. A craniotomy was a brain surgery that involved the temporary removal of bone from the skull to make repairs in the brain. It was highly intensive and came with certain risks, which made it was serious surgery.
The purpose of this surgery was to give access to a surgeon to the patient's head under the skull. A craniotomy can be performed for a variety of reasons, not only to remove brain tumours but to remove blood clots, fixed arteriovenous malformations (AVMs), repaired an aneurysm, drained brain abscesses, and to repair skull fractures and tears in the membrane lining.
However, for this surgery, a brain tumour needed to remove from a ten year old girl.
Then the surgery started. The first step was for an anesthesiologist to administer anaesthesia and monitoring the little girl's vitals throughout the procedure. Then, the nurse would shave the part of the head the surgeon would operate on.
To help to locate the brain tumour, Profesor Guan used MRI scans to guide them during a craniotomy surgery. This type of surgery was called a stereotactic or image-guided craniotomy.
Yu Qi could see that Professor Guan made an incision in the head to get access to the skull. Afterwards, he used a medical drill to burrow a hole in the skull and removed part of the bone to get access inside.
The flap would be saved to be put back later on or replaced with an artificial bone. The dura matter would be separated from the skull bone to access the brain inside. Dura mater was the brain's outermost membrane.
At this point, Professor Guan was looking for the tumour. It was a hard time since sometimes the tumour was hiding in the bad location and it was hard to be removed even though the surgeon knew the location.
After struggling for about one hour, the team succeed to remove the tumour. Once completed, the surgeon sews the tissues together and reattach the bone flap. Finally, the incision closed with sutures or staples and then bandaged.
The surgery was completed in three hours. After that, the little girl transferred to the ICU ward for monitoring and followed by a neurosurgical nursing unit. She needed to stay for a few days. The little girl required rehabilitation after the procedure, which included meeting with occupational therapists, physical therapists, and speech therapists, if necessary.
”Do you learn something from the surgery?” Professor Guan just stepped around from the cleaning room spotted Ah Kean and Yu Qi were standing outside the cleaning room.
Yu Qi and Ah Kean immediately stood straight facing Professor Guan.
”I have learnt a lot from this.” Yu Qi answered.