First observation of a surgery

Witnessed my first complete surgery on Tuesday: A subtotal thyroidectomy (removing the thyroid gland) for a young female with multinodular goitre.

Only 5 of us in the 20-students batch are allowed to go into the operation theatre at a time to observe the surgery. The next 5 students will go in during the next surgery.

Of course I was excited as hell to actually observe a full operation. *suaku ma* Changed to the green robe, surgical mask and hair mask on and we're set.

Pardon the excitement of a jakun.. =)

I really admire the 2 surgeons conducting the surgery (all surgeons actually) for their patience in doing such meticulous work of removing the skin, platysma, subcutaneous tissue, deep fascia etc and ligating each and every vessels properly before suturing the vessels. Firstly, i cannot even fathom how they recognise the vessels or nerves with everything looking so red?!

The patient in this operation has an anomaly with her left recurrent laryngeal nerve which closely adherent to the posteromedial aspect of the gland. One of the surgeon even exclaimed, "Shit!" when he saw the situation (means mre work to do). The surgeons have to separate the nerve from gland before removing and must avoid cutting the nerve to prevent further complications like hoarseness of voice etc.

All this sounds easy but the entire operation took 4 hours.



I was thinking after 2 hours thru the operation: "Just remove the gland lo! Cut those nerves and vessels!" 4 hours are longggg.........