Back to... Anatomy??
Surgery has always been and will always be first and foremost about anatomy.
This week, as part of our summer anatomy series during residency, I had the unique opportunity to fully dissect two cadaveric human upper extremities. I spent about 9 or 10 hours in there total finding arteries, tendons, ligaments, and of course bones.
It's been a long while since I've spent anywhere near that amount of time in an anatomy lab, but it felt sort of good to be back. In fact, I appreciated it much more this time around than when I was a first-year medical student who knew next to nothing about surgical technique or anatomy.
Back in medical school, I was just following the prescribed anatomical dissections in the book (when I could, anyway) and not looking for anything in particular. "Oh, look, there's another vein... that I mistakenly cut through. Wonder if they'll tag it on the practical? Hope I don't fail."
It was a lot like scuba diving, as described by Seinfeld ("There's a fish, there's a rock, who cares? Don't die!")
But this time, I had a much greater sense of familiarity with the anatomical structures. I was actually looking for things. "Where's that palmar arch? It should be right here at the base of this digital artery..." I was familiar with the structures I was moving out of the way to get to others. "Flexor carpi radialis. Innervated by the median nerve. Lives in its own sheath. Watch out for his neighbor, radial artery. Next to that, the finger flexors, flexor digitorum superficialis and profundus, with shared innervation by median and ulnar nerves. Beneath them, pronator quadratus. Innervated by anterior interosseous nerve. Directly above the distal radius."
It was a pretty cool experience. I am very grateful for the opportunity, both to my program and to the person who volunteered their body for science.
Earlier today, I got to perform a surgery where we removed a child's thumb. Don't worry, he had another one!
Seriously, though, that's exactly what we did. He had a duplicated thumb so we (this time, meaning I did it personally) removed the extra one.
It was very cool to work a scalpel in two very different ways within only a few hours of each other. During the case, I was careful, meticulous, measured. Doing the anatomical dissection, my scalpel work was more... "curious"... than measured. "Hmm. What happens if I make this incision here instead of there?"
Anyway it was a good day.
This week, as part of our summer anatomy series during residency, I had the unique opportunity to fully dissect two cadaveric human upper extremities. I spent about 9 or 10 hours in there total finding arteries, tendons, ligaments, and of course bones.
It's been a long while since I've spent anywhere near that amount of time in an anatomy lab, but it felt sort of good to be back. In fact, I appreciated it much more this time around than when I was a first-year medical student who knew next to nothing about surgical technique or anatomy.
Back in medical school, I was just following the prescribed anatomical dissections in the book (when I could, anyway) and not looking for anything in particular. "Oh, look, there's another vein... that I mistakenly cut through. Wonder if they'll tag it on the practical? Hope I don't fail."
It was a lot like scuba diving, as described by Seinfeld ("There's a fish, there's a rock, who cares? Don't die!")
But this time, I had a much greater sense of familiarity with the anatomical structures. I was actually looking for things. "Where's that palmar arch? It should be right here at the base of this digital artery..." I was familiar with the structures I was moving out of the way to get to others. "Flexor carpi radialis. Innervated by the median nerve. Lives in its own sheath. Watch out for his neighbor, radial artery. Next to that, the finger flexors, flexor digitorum superficialis and profundus, with shared innervation by median and ulnar nerves. Beneath them, pronator quadratus. Innervated by anterior interosseous nerve. Directly above the distal radius."
It was a pretty cool experience. I am very grateful for the opportunity, both to my program and to the person who volunteered their body for science.
Earlier today, I got to perform a surgery where we removed a child's thumb. Don't worry, he had another one!
Seriously, though, that's exactly what we did. He had a duplicated thumb so we (this time, meaning I did it personally) removed the extra one.
It was very cool to work a scalpel in two very different ways within only a few hours of each other. During the case, I was careful, meticulous, measured. Doing the anatomical dissection, my scalpel work was more... "curious"... than measured. "Hmm. What happens if I make this incision here instead of there?"
Anyway it was a good day.
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