Days 7,8

Day 7:  Today I was the second day that I went around with Dr. Sanchez!  It was an interesting day that held two different kinds of endo-procedures that are minimally invasive and are worked through using X-ray, angiograms, and ultrasound technology as you cannot see what you're doing.  The first case was required the implantation of a renal artery stint.  The reason for this was because at the patient's advanced age he had stenosis which is when a vein or an artery narrows due to a number of reasons, in this case it was becoming calcified.  The stint aims to create a clear pathway with a greater diameter than before without breaking off the calcium as that can lead to internal bleeding.  The second case was brief and similar to the first as he just attended during the "critical phase" of a procedure that one of his fellows was performing in another part of the vascular department.

Day 8:  This day I only had one case with the surgeon I was shadowing because it turned out to be much more complicated than anyone anticipated.  They were doing an arterial graft just after the blood comes out of the heart, and while they were doing it it required a lot of prep and tissue removal around that artery and the other blood vessels around it.  While they were doing this they accidentally poked a vein (twice) because of how close they were working around it, and thankfully it didn't rupture but it made them go a lot slower around it.  Once they got the blockage cleared they cut the part that needed to be removed, and put in the graft to simulate the walls of the artery.

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