Ashley Cardenas/Dr. Roger Hartl- Week 7

This week I shadowed Dr. Hartl in the OR and clinic. 

Monday I was in the OR, and I watched Dr. Hartl perform a TLIF. I also collected a bone marrow and disc sample. The bone marrow was taken to the Spector Lab for further processing, while the disc sample was shipped to the Delco Lab in Ithaca. As for the BM, I used Ficoll to create a density gradient of the different components. I then froze down the middle, white portion of the gradient which contained the nucleated cells. Following freezing, the cells were shipped to Ithaca where they were plated to obtain the mesenchymal stem cells. From the 3ccs of BM I processed we isolated around 600,000 stem cells. This was around the number we were expecting. 

Tuesday and Wednesday, I was in the clinic. I also attended a couple of meetings. One of my lab mates and I are planning on writing a review series with Dr. Hartl. Thursday, I spent the day creating an excel file with patient data for our retrospective study. This study is comparing patient reported outcomes between patients who received BM injections after a microdiscectomy to those who received a microdiscectomy alone.


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