Hello everyone, so far it has been a very interesting last week at the lab! So far this week I have been given the opportunity explore and observe what goes on in the clinical aspect of the research that we do as well as what goes on in the hospital itself. Occasionally, in the lab I would get a blood sample from a patient that has just undergone a Whipple procedure. On Monday I actually got the amazing opportunity to observe a Whipple procedure. A Whipple procedure is the partial or whole resection of the pancreas, and in most cases they also remove the duodenum because it is so intertwined with the pancreas that it is hard to take out the pancreas without also resecting the duodenum. The Whipple procedure is the most common operation preformed to treat pancreatic cancer or even precancerous lesions. Not every patient with pancreatic cancer is able to go to the operating room. Because the pancreas is so close to important blood vessels it is common for a cancer to have arterial involvement and therefore be unresectable. When this is the case a patient is usually given chemotherapy and radiation in the hope that the cancer will shrink and become resectable.
The operation is 6 hours long and depending on how much of the pancreas is removed, the patient may become diabetic. I had to be in the building and with scrubs on by 7:45 am because the procedure started at 8:00 am. Watching the surgery was a really cool experience. All throughout the 6 hour surgery the surgeon, assisting surgeon, nurses, anesthesiologist, and medical technicians all worked together like a well oiled machine. It was really something to watch! Although at first I felt somewhat queasy and I had to fight the urge to pass out, I somehow managed to pull through and act like the procedure didn't faze me. I think that it helped that I skipped breakfast that day. After I got used to all of the blood and it became a lot more interesting and it started to turn into a really cool experience. When the pancreas and the duodenoum were removed they were taken to a different place in order to be examined. Slides of the pancreas tissue were made and looked at to ensure that no cancerous cells are left in that particular area. In this particular case the patient did not have pancreatic cancer, but had multifocal IPMNs which are precancerous lesions and would become cancerous given a few years. The pathologists dissected the pancreas and measured and took note of each IPMN within the pancreas. Seeing these cysts was a unique experience and I am glad to have been able to watch them do their work. This was really good for me the see where the blood that I process comes from and witness what goes on in the hospital.
In addition to being in the hospital, my lab had me do some cryosectioning. Cyrosectioning is just a fancy term for making slides. I made many slides from pancreatic tumor tissue and normal pancreatic tissue. I also stained the slides in order to make them easier to see under the microscope.
 |
| A pic of the cyrosectioning station |
No comments:
Post a Comment