Week 7 - Daniella

Week 7: July 22-26, 2019

Last week of Immersion! This summer has gone by so quickly and has been such a whirlwind of experiences. From living in NYC to shadowing surgeries and patient visits to conducting novel clinical research, I have grown not only as a researcher but as a person as well. In general, this clinical immersion experience has provided greater depth and perspective to my doctoral research back in Ithaca. My interactions with clinicians and researchers in a hospital setting has pushed me to take greater initiative and be more persistent in achieving the goals I set forth.

As a culmination to my immersion project, I presented twice at the beginning of this week, once at a joint osteoimmunology meeting at HSS and once at Dr. Ivashkiv’s lab meeting. Yet, my immersion experience was not yet over as I still had additional samples to collect, process, and analyze in addition to shadowing surgeries. On my last day of immersion, I was able to shadow an ACL reconstruction surgery for which I was able to collect healthy patellar tendon for same day processing in the lab. Although I had already seen this type of surgery once before, this patient opted for a tendon autograft as opposed to a cadaveric allograft. Therefore, the first step was to harvest the appropriate amount of patellar tendon from the patient in an open procedure. I found it quite fascinating how the autograft tendon was prepared by the physician assistant on the side, measuring, sawing, cutting, and sewing the tissue to the appropriate length, width and shape. It is also somewhat surprising how much force is required to pull the tendon autograft through the knee joint to replace the ACL, which is done by pulling strings weaved through small incision holes above and below the knee. I am very glad that I was able to maximize my time not only on my last day but also throughout my summer immersion experience.

Once I return to Ithaca, I will complete data analysis for flow cytometry and prepare an abstract for submission to the annual Orthopedic Research Society (ORS) Conference. The skills and techniques that I have gathered as well as the preliminary data I have collected during immersion will directly benefit me in my doctoral research and will help jumpstart my first aim.