When surgeons perform a “36 hour operation” what exactly are they doing?

Question

What exactly are they doing the entirety of those hours? Are they literally just cutting and stitching and suctioning the entire time? Do they have breaks?

In: 4243

Answer 1

My personal record is about 24 hours and I was involved in the entire procedure. It was a gigantic tumor in a teenager and just took that long to peel it out of his skull base, stop the bleeding, close the various holes we made, etc.