I just saw a post about a doctor monitoring his patients vitals after a 23 hour long heart transplant surgery, with the nurses sleeping in the background. I understand that that may be one of the hardest things in the world to do, and requires an amount of focus I can’t even imagine. But still, what takes **so** long in the operation room?
Ninja edit: missspell
In: Biology
I’ve shadowed doctors before in the operating room and i believe it’s because of the amount of things they have to keep in mind – making the perfect incisions, making sure the patient doesn’t lose too much blood, monitoring vitals etc. Due to this most doctors choose to rather take their time working with complete care and focus rather than hurry and risk making any mistakes at all. A lot of times some things can be trial and error too and they need to make sure they’ve looked at and thought about what needs to be done as many times as necessary, and then ten more times.
AST Certified and California credentialed Surgical Assistant here. Surgical procedures vary in length depending on how complicated the surgery is ( example – heart transplant 20+ hr VS a hip replacement 2-3 hr), the patients physical condition, and honestly the dr’s over all experience. In general anything having to do with the head, neck, or upper trunk is going to take significantly longer due to the fact there are so many vital organs packed into these parts of the human body. A wrong move in these areas can mean immediate and catastrophic results. The shortest procedures are usually the extremities. I’ve seen a foot amputated start to finish in about 20 min.
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Heart transplants are fairly easy, honestly. They don’t normally take more than 5-6 hours. Livers, otoh, take forEVER.
-Important Lessons learned :
1) People are capable of anything. Having worked trauma you see the worst of the worst. Witnessing the horrendous things people are capable of doing to each other gives you a different perspective on humanity in general.
2) There is no such thing as a small surgery if you’re being put under anesthesia. When they put you under they literally put you on the border of life and death. Anytime that you are put on an operating room table under anesthesia you were taking a tremendous risk and it’s not to be taken lightly.
3) Last but not least. And in my opinion one of the most important. Although surgeons do come off having a God complex. The truth is most of them are your average human being just like me and you. People have a tendency to put them on a pedestal because of their education and the responsibility that’s handed to them. But in the end they’re human just like the rest of us.
-One of the most interesting cases that still sticks with me today:
Had a man come in my hospital face down butt in the air. When he was put on the yard table and the sheet was removed from the top of him there was about 4 inches of a black dildo protruding from the anus. Once the patient was sedated and the body was relaxed the doctor was able to insert his hand into the anal canal and manipulate the object to remove it. It ended up being a 16 inch double ended black dildo. The gentlemen had gotten it so far up that I had actually gotten caught on what’s called the descending colon. To this day I still can’t believe it went that far up in the patient. The dildo was documented, washed and put with the patient’s belongings to be sent home with him.
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