Ashley Cardenas/Dr. Roger Hartl - Week 1

My first week of immersion was phenomenal! It started off with orientation and a couple of introductory meetings with Dr. Hartl and his team.

On Monday I went over Dr. Hartls weekly schedule with his research assistant. Tuesday morning consisted of meetings with Dr. Hartl and his various research fellows and collaborators. These meetings were extremely valuable to me since I had the chance to learn more about the research projects Dr. Hartl is working on. I was also able to discuss my own research project for immersion. On Wednesday, I spent the majority of the day in clinic at the Spine Center. This was by far my favorite part of the week since I was able to observe how Dr. Hartl diagnosed his patients by associating their regions of pain and/or immobility with problem areas in the spine. During clinic, I was also able to acquire consent for bone marrow aspirate concentrate (BMAC) and intervertebral disc tissue collection from a patient that will be having a transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF) a couple of weeks from now. I also had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Hartl give a brief presentation on minimally invasive spine surgery at the Global Congress on Spine and Spinal Disorders. Throughout the week, I observed Dr. Hartl perform various surgeries including a diskectomy, laminectomy, spinal fusion, and TLIF. 

During immersion, I will also be working in Dr. Jason Spector's laboratory processing tissue collected from Dr. Hartl's surgeries. My immersion project will involve characterizing BMAC and annular tissue samples. Thus, this week I also toured Dr. Spector's laboratory and participated in his weekly laboratory meeting. On Wednesday, I received supplies from Ithaca which will be helpful in the upcoming weeks. 




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