Ellen Brooks/Dr. Marx - Week 6

I started this week following Dr. Marx around the clinic, and, again, seeing the time and energy that he puts towards each person that walks through the door, no matter how far behind schedule that may make him. A number of the patients that come through the clinic are recommended for ACL surgery. While explaining the procedures, the recovery, and the risks, Dr. Marx also explains the options for grafts and a bit of data behind each graft type. Sometimes the patients are completely in tune with this explanation. However, the majority of the time, the patient seems confused or even concerned. In a previous Summer Immersion meeting, we discussed how often doctors are performing diagnoses and surgeries based as much (or more) on experience as rather than scientific data. Here we discussed the need for better integration of science into medicine. My experiences in the clinic indicate to me that this need is also on the patient side. We need to improve scientific communication and knowledge to the general public, especially in a medical setting. In this way, patients can be fully informed, and confident in a procedure. 

On Wednesday I watched in the Operating Room again. This week, Cindy came with to the OR for the morning. In trying to explain what was happening to her, I realized how much I have learned this summer. While in the OR, I had an interesting conversation with one of the equipment reps. He believed all the scientific and manufacturing advancements in orthopedic surgery had been made based on the fact that equipment and knee replacement technology hadn't changed in several decades. I disagree with this and believe that there will always be room for improvements and that we are actually on the brink of new orthopedics technologies right now with biological materials and new fabrication methods such as 3D printing. We ended up having a rather long conversation about the benefits of 3D printed surgical implants. 

Another advancement that seems to be on the near horizon for medicine is AI. This week, we heard another very interesting talk about AI in the medical space and I know a few students are working with AI in their research projects as well. I am very curious to see how this technology will impact, and likely change, every part of daily life including medicine. As a former pharmaceutical chemist, I am also interested to see how AI will make it through the FDA for full use in the clinic and operating room. 

Finally this week, I feel I made solid progress on my research project. Based on data collected at HSS and data found through literature search, I have found a number of genes that are altered in impacted cartilage, cartilage with osteoarthritis, and cartilage with inflammation (this is being used as a model of rheumatoid arthritis). The overlap of these genes, and genes unique to each prognosis may help us better understand disease progression, even at early stages of injury. In the coming week, I will look through these shared genes to determine what impacts they have on the chondrocytes. I will present this work at the OSTR meeting on July 27th. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Carlos Urrea / Dr. Sabrina Strickland : Week 8

 This was the final week of the Immersion program. On Monday, I shadowed Dr. Strickland in the OR for the last time where she performed two tibial tubercle osteotomy distalizations. I also got to help my labmate, Salman Matan, collect healthy articular cartilage samples. On Tuesday, it was my last day helping in the biomechanics lab. On top of helping Kalle with the usual testing and calibration, I watched how they tested a PVA meniscus in the joint simulator. It was interesting to see how the PVA meniscus could be used as a replacement and how testing is done to verify its mechanical compliance. On Wednesday, I shadowed Dr. Strickland in the clinic where again I got to see the patient-clinician interaction and the imaging diagnostic process. On Thursday, I presented about the immersion program to the HSS group and got to talk about how the research I did during the summer connects back to my research project in Ithaca. Finally on Friday, due to my presentation, Dr. Scott Rodeo inv...
Read more

Ana Witkowski / Dr. Bostrom Week 8

 This summer has gone by so fast! This week was mostly just wrapping up the summer. I went and saw a little bit more of the mouse gait analysis and acclimation. Learning how to acclimate the mice for the gait analysis is super important for the consistency of the data, as mice that haven’t been acclimatized to the treadmill have a much wider spread and learning curve over the experiment. We learned how the mice get tire after about a minute of running, even if you spread that minute out over a couple bouts of running, which was super important for the next couple days of acclimation.  I also got the opportunity this week to shadow in the Gait and Motion Analysis lab for a case. I have never seen the human gait analysis before, so I was immensely grateful for this opportunity! I spent the afternoon learning about the cameras and the calibration, watching a full PT exam, and then watching a gait analysis videotaping. There are 14 cameras, 4 force plates, and so many reflective s...
Read more

Cindy Tung/Dr. Susan Gauthier - Week 8

This was the last week of immersion and I spent my time in the lab working with our mice injected with a  breast cancer cell line. This was week three post-injection, and it was time to resect the tumor sample. Before resection, we imaged the mice, taking note to measure their weight and hydrating their eyes with vaseline as they cannot close their eyes under isoflurane. In collaboration with people at HSS, we also performed a cardiac puncture to gather blood samples, as well as a spine resection. A cardiac puncture is a terminal procedure that is performed by poking a hole in the heart and using a syringe to pull blood. Because the heart still pumps blood for several beats, the previous step is repeated so when the heart refills with blood, it can be extracted accordingly.  This summer has provided me with so much invaluable experiences, from working with small animals to gaining a deeper understanding of how the healthcare system works.  I shadowed clinicians in neurora...
Read more