Can't believe there's only two weeks left!
The past week saw the culmination of work on the software program I was working for analyzing the heads of sheep femurs. The program was mostly tweaked so that it could run multiple times and analyze a set of images at once, as opposed to forcing the user to select an individual picture (which would be torture given the enormous amount of pictures that we have available). For the most part, Drs. Russell and Tate have been busy doing medical practice as MRI/radiology fellows, not to mention that they have almost no background on code writing. The meeting with Dr. Potter did not happen this week as I'd hoped so I will be trying to meet with her sometime after Tuesday. More work is to be done on the analyzing images from the sheep femur, as it turns that some of the requested images were never delivered. Once they've been delivered, I will get started on analyzing and hopefully getting information on number of trabeculae, trabecular width and thickness with the finished program.
Beyond writing more lines of code, my week was also devoted to observing a new doctor. In this case, I had the chance to follow Dr. Scott Rodeo, an orthopaedic surgeon that is currently mentoring fellow BME student Elizabeth Feeney. I was busy following him around Friday, a day that saw four operations, although mostly dominated by the third case of the day. This case, that of a very young patient, took over four hours since it needed major reconstruction around the left knee. It seems that the patient suffered an incident that left the medial collateral ligament (MCL) badly damaged and severely dislocated the patella (kneecap). In order to fix this, Dr. Rodeo had to sever several tendons/ligaments and insert screws along the diaphysis of the femur to aid in realignment, after which he had to very carefully stitch tendons/ligaments as well as he could. For the patella, allografts of cadaveric bone were actually needed for the operation, which he personalized himself using something akin to a metal grinding wheel. The operation highlighted the very intricate use of stitching in realignment; surgeons were tasked with braiding the tendon in very particular ways to help in reestablishing alignment of the bones. They would make most hair stylists jealous...
Outside of fixing MCL injuries and patellas, Dr. Rodeo also did other routine work such as debridement of tissue around a rotator cuff implant, as well as clean the area around a recent total knee replacement. Both surgeries illustrated aspects of careful debridement using a specialized type of siphoning saw and a cauterizing rod, aided by the use of a miniature camera to show the inside of the body. With the exception of the four hour case, all procedures seem to be minimally invasive, all thanks to the use of this high precision, small-scale instruments.
Plans for next include the final end to coding (bummer!) and the analysis of the last set of MRI images of sheep femurs. For Monday though, I will have the chance to follow Dr. Mathias Bostrom for one last round of surgery, so I will still be able to observe more surgery procedures.
The theme for this past weekend was music. I had the chance to venture out to two musical venues in the city, Music Hall of Williamsburg and Mercury Lounge. Altogether, I saw around six musical acts ranging from 50s-style soft rock to contemporary indie, with all bands being small and mostly local. My favorite by far was musician Anderson East, an artists that employs from regular guitars to saxophones and funky electronic piano. He recently released his second album and I sure do look forward to more. For food I had a fantastic time hanging out with fellow BME students at Print. and the Press Lounge, an evening that included fine food and killer views of midtown Manhattan.
Restaurant of the week:
Print.
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