Hey followers! This is a fairly unrelated topic of
discussion, but some of you may have heard about a shooter in the Phoenix area.
It turns out the shootings were really close to Cardon Children’s Medical
Center, my research site, so the hospital is on lockdown as I’m writing this
post. Believe it or not, we didn’t turn the lights off and sit under our desks.
All but 3 of the hospital’s entrances and exits are locked, while the 3 unlocked
doors are accompanied by security guards. On the inside, however, everything and
everyone is working as if nothing had changed, which makes sense, because there
are still patients that need medical attention.
Update: The shooter
was caught just down the street, and he was actually taken to the emergency
room at the same hospital.
In other news, at the beginning of this week, my advisor
gave me a small cactus and told me that it is my responsibility to maintain and
water the plant every week. Here’s what it looks like:
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I came in during spring break to watch one of Dr. Vegunta’s
laparoscopic surgeries. This particular surgery was a nissen fundoplication, in
order to correct a hiatal hernia. A hiatal hernia is the protrusion of the
upper part of the stomach into the thorax, which is the area between the neck
and the abdomen, in which the thoracic cavity is located. The stomach enters
the thoracic cavity through the hole between the two cavities, which the
esophagus goes through. Dr. Vegunta and his colleague, Dr. Truong, created
several openings in the patient’s abdomen for the camera and the rest of the
laparoscopic tools. During the surgery, which lasted 7 hours, Dr. Vegunta
pulled the stomach back into the abdominal cavity, then stitched part of it around
the esophagus, so the same movement doesn’t happen again. Here’s a cartoon of
what the surgery looks like:
Before I go, here’s some trivia for you:
What’s the difference between pain and tenderness?
What’s the difference between a symptom and a sign?
Write your answers in the comments, and I’ll give you the
answers in my next post.
Hi Roshan,
ReplyDelete7 hours for a hernia surgery? Isn't that a little long? Was it a particularly complicated problem?
I obviously wasn't going to get your questions right, so I asked my wife. She says pain is when something hurts on its own but tenderness is pain only when you press on the area. A sign is a measurable symptom, as opposed to other symptoms that are experienced by the patient but hard to verify... how did she do?
This was actually a different type of hernia than the one you may be referring to. An inguinal hernia occurs when soft tissue protrudes through the abdominal muscles, and only requires about an hour of operation. A hiatal hernia, on the other hand, occurs when a part of the stomach protrudes through the diaphragm. This surgery was to correct a hiatal hernia, which takes much longer to complete. She was very accurate regarding the definitions of tenderness and pain. She was close on symptoms and signs, but not quite what I as looking for. A symptom is something the patient notices and tells the doctor about, while a sign is something the doctor notices in the patient. For example, pain is a symptom, as a patient can tell when he or she is in pain, whereas tenderness is a sign that the doctor notices in the patient
DeleteHey Roshan! Glad you are okay!
ReplyDeleteI would agree with Mr. Bloom that pain is when something hurts but tenderness is pain when pressed.
As for symptom and signs, I would say a sign is something that the doctor can see and a symptom is something the patient tells the doctor
That's exactly right!
Delete