Surgery Godfather
Chapter 1509 - 1125: The Topic of Gauze

Chapter 1509: Chapter 1125: The Topic of Gauze

The surgery is not only highly invasive, but also very risky. However, Yang Ping now has no other choice. To reduce Sisi’s risk, this surgery must be done, proactively intervening to seize the initiative.

A head surgery requires the patient to be shaved bald. Now, Sisi has already been shaved bald by the nurse. When he got on the operating table, he started experiencing frequent nausea and vomiting, which is caused by high intracranial pressure, indicating that the illness is progressing rapidly. Yang Ping’s judgment was correct; hesitating for another moment might indeed lead to complications.

According to traditional methods, after bone flap decompression, a series of problems emerge. For example, the defect formed after removing the bone flap can only be repaired with a titanium mesh. If the swollen brain tissue cannot shrink back to its normal size, this protruding brain tissue will ultimately not be able to be reintegrated and must be resected. Resection of brain tissue can lead to some sequelae.

However, Yang Ping conducted a pre-operative analysis. For the former issue, he could use a modified method to avoid using a titanium mesh and instead use the original skull bone flap to cover the gap. This is the "flip-top" bone flap removal technique he previously modified, where the bone piece is removed like lifting a lid. The second-phase surgery can put the lid back. While this improved technique seems simple, it indeed requires a certain level of technical sophistication, or else traditional titanium mesh repair technology would not have been relied upon for so long.

As for the situation where brain tissue cannot be restored and is resected, Yang Ping also seriously analyzed it. In such cases, the swollen brain tissue due to edema can shrink back because the remnants of the dead tumor cells will be absorbed and eliminated. In the space originally occupied by tumor cells, although it will be occupied by body fluid, at that time, some special methods can be used to promote the absorption of these body fluids.

It seems that even if the treatment effect is excellent and the tumor cells die, a lot of new issues will still need to be addressed. This is the reason why the success rate of new drug trials is extremely low. In clinical trials, many previously unencountered and unconsidered problems will arise. Each of these problems is very difficult to solve. If they can be solved, the trial will succeed. Otherwise, the experiment is doomed to fail. In most cases, these problems are very difficult to solve, sometimes requiring years, decades, or even decades to resolve.

The non-physician researchers from the laboratory also sat in the operating room’s teaching room to observe the surgery. Although they do not need to participate in clinical work and only engage in research in the laboratory, being able to grasp some clinical knowledge greatly aids in their scientific research.

Professor Zhang Zhiwei from Nandu Medical University led a team to Sanbo Hospital to observe the surgery as well. Their task in the project is to select the most suitable virus, and they provide plans for virus modification. The modification implementation of the virus is completed by the gene laboratory at Nandu Medical University. Previously, when they confined their research on viruses within their field, they never imagined viruses could be used in this way. Nor did they expect the experiment to present such clinical issues.

Even though Yang Ping is extremely proficient in surgery, he did not omit the necessary steps. First, the necessary steps ensure safety. Second, skimping on necessary steps inevitably sets a poor example, misleading learners. Once such misguidance spreads, the consequences could be unimaginable.

Before the operation, Yang Ping marked Sisi’s head to indicate where to cut, how to segment the bone, and the shape and area of the bone flap to best fit the internal fixation device that will need to be implanted later.

Sisi was positioned prone under general anesthesia, with his head fixed in a special fixture. Yang Ping began to incise the scalp, clamping a hemostat at each cut point. The blood supply to the scalp is very rich. If hemostats are not promptly applied, it would bleed profusely. In comparison, avulsion injuries to skin elsewhere on the body generally do not bleed excessively, so long as major vascular injuries are avoided, nor do they typically cause shock. However, scalp avulsion injuries differ from ordinary skin avulsions. Even if major vessels remain undamaged, the extensive oozing from the scalp results in bleeding at a shockingly rapid pace. If not promptly stopped, it can lead to hemorrhagic shock and death.

When the scalp is cut open, no matter how fast the chief surgeon’s hand speed, it is impossible to keep the incision clean and bloodless. But Yang Ping managed to do it. He incised the scalp and precisely placed scalp clamps stably before the blood had a chance to seep out.

Thus, when the entire incision was complete, it was remarkably clean, with no visible bleeding at all. The assistant hardly had any use for the gauze in hand meant for pressing to stop bleeding.

Cleanliness, the first intuitive impression of Yang Ping’s surgery is cleanliness—extreme cleanliness. From start to finish, hardly any bleeding is visible. Only Yang Ping could achieve such thorough cleanliness.

Sometimes, when Song Zimo and Xu Zhiliang’s surgeries encounter difficulties, after Yang Ping steps in, the surgery soon becomes clean, as if Yang Ping stepped in not to solve the problem but to clean up. Not only Song Zimo and Yang noticed this issue, but any doctor saved by Yang Ping during surgery realizes this. Every time a bloody and gory surgery is handed over to Professor Yang, when he returns it to the chief surgeon, the surgical field is always impeccably clean, one pleasing to the eye. Of course, this cleanliness cannot last long—once the chief surgeon retakes the case, it quickly returns to its bloody state, as if blood and gore are the norm.