Week 3 - Tyler McNeill

The third week of Immersion kicked off with my first trip to the OR to witness a surgery with Dr. Jason Spector bright and early on Monday morning! The surgery took almost 12 hours to fully complete and required surgeons from three different specialties to participate. The patient was undergoing a tumor removal (which required a hemiglossectomy through a trans-mandibular approach) followed by a microvascular reconstruction using a flap from the patient’s thigh. Being that this procedure was performed trans-mandibular (meaning that the mandible was cut and opened for full access to the entirety of the tongue), the surgery was understandably very invasive. Coming from last week, where I learned about the comparison of minimally-invasive and traditional surgical models, it was very interesting to see how an understanding of the patient’s condition, needs, and the surgical technique drove the decision to pursue one of these routes as opposed to the other.

Prior to witnessing my first surgery, I never could’ve imaged how invasive and extensive these procedures can be! It’s difficult to fully understand the amount of thought that has to go into each move of the procedure to fully ensure that there is no additional damage to the surrounding environment. In particular, I thought it was interesting to understand the breadth of expertise that a doctor must have when performing a surgery. I feel that it’s relatively common for researchers to become pigeonholed in their particular field. For example, my research throughout my PhD will focus primarily on bone tissue. However, surgeons that specialize in work that involves bone still interact with surrounding tissues. I feel like this serves as a reminder that our work in lab can’t be completely isolated from the clinical perspective; if we don’t consider the different aspects related to our work, we lose some of the applicability of our studies.

In lab this week, I began work on a project involving custom knee implants, centered around understanding the benefits and drawbacks of custom jigs and components as compared to standard options. I think this is a very interesting field, being that personalized medical treatments appear to be more ideal amongst patient populations and seem to be becoming more commonplace in clinical practices. Dr. Bostrom will be presenting some of this work at a conference in the near future and it will be shown in a series of talks that are being organized at the Hospital for Special Surgery. Thus far, it’s been a lot of research (and likely will continue to be!) but has been very fascinating. I’m excited to continue on in this work throughout the rest of the summer!

In terms of exploring the city this week, Mariela and I went to see an improvisation show at Upright Citizens Brigade in Hell’s Kitchen, which was a lot of fun! I’ve also spent some time this week trying a lot of the different restaurants that surround our housing, because one of my friends is visiting the city this upcoming weekend and I’m planning to show him around the area.