10/9/15

     This past Friday I had the day off, but decided to go to Memorial Hermann for my internship anyways. I know, I could’ve slept in until noon- which was tempting- but I usually have good experiences up at the hospital, and it’s something that I enjoy doing. After arriving, Dr. Nguyen informed me that the urinary tract infection he had scheduled for the morning (and had told me about in the days prior) had been moved due to some patient complications. Bummer. Instead, the morning schedule consisted of the usual: a lecture, valve conference, and patient checkups. The lecture involved a young patient with internal bleeding of the left colon along with a nasty case of necrosis, which is a fancy word for cell death. The necrosis was caused by ischemia, an inadequate supply of blood. Multiple surgeries were performed on him, and he spent two weeks on a ventilator. After all of this, the doctors just couldn’t walk away, and proceeded on with treatment- as of now he is back in school, with his only issue being a slightly-elevated diaphragm. An operation to solve this is soon to follow. Valve conference was very short, and only a few cases were presented. One case that caught my eye was that of a middle-aged patient with no past medical history, who suddenly had a stroke. It was later discovered that he/she had a mass in the right atrium of his/her heart, and that it could be some rare form of sarcoma. Only time will tell. From here, we went to post-op patient checkups. I saw one of the patients we checked with get operated on a few weeks earlier, and even got to meet with him before that surgery. I’ve seen him work through his entire process at the hospital; pre-op, surgery, and post-op/recovery checkup. I thought that this was pretty neat, but for the doctors around me, this was just another day at the hospital. 

10/2/15

                 This Friday was an especially busy morning. When I met up with Dr. Nguyen at the Heart and Vascular Institute elevators, we immediately rushed off to attend a presentation, our hands kept warm by our cafe mochas as we briskly walked to our destination. Shortly after we got into the room,  a 72-slide collection of information on carotid artery stenosis intervention commenced. The left and right carotid arteries carry oxygenated blood directly to the brain, making it fairly important, and stenosis is the tightening of blood vessels. So, the presentation was about different interventional methods for vessel tightening in that area. The two main contenders for intervention in the area are stents and endarterectomies-both have their benefits and drawbacks, which became extremely apparent once the doctors began to argue after the presentation had ended. No good fix-all exists for different arterial blockages, so we'll just have to wait and see what sorts of developments come along.

                At 8:00, we headed over to valve conference, which is when the cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgeons meet up to discuss individual post-op patients. It ran much longer than usual, stretching to around two hours. One of the most interesting cases they discussed was that of a person with a quadricuspid valve. Normal valves in the heart have three pieces to them, called leaflets, that section off the chambers of the heart. They open and close when blood needs to be pumped through them. This patient had an extremely rare defect that caused one of his valves (I believe it was his aortic valve) to have four leaflets, putting him at a higher risk for a variety of other heart diseases. The patient is getting a valve replacement soon, which is a surgery that I wish I could see- that would be a really unique experience, simply because his/her condition is so rare. It was definitely a fun morning in the hospital.