EdHeads and Knee Replacement

 

I’ve attached a link that leads to a website called EdHeads.com. This website contains simulations that allow kids to get real life experiences, such as performing a medical procedure or building something for a targeted sales group. I’m going to talk about the medical procedure simulation.

            To start, the doctor has you sign in, or register, your patient. Then he asks you questions, such as what could be wrong with your patient and all the possible ways to fix it. They also show you an x-ray of the injury or problem, and have you identify which leg or area has the problem. Being able to read x-rays is a key part of the surgical field of medicine. Having to know all the answers to these questions is very similar to how it’s done in the real world.

            Once you have a good understanding of the patient’s diagnosis, you’re ready to prep them. This includes sterilizing the area and dressing the patient. The doctor has you initial which leg you’re operating on. This may seem silly, but it’s actually done to assure the doctor remembers which leg to operate on. In this particular simulation, you’re performing a knee replacement. Not only the knee, but the whole leg needs to be sterilized, and this is done by using a sterilizing liquid and a sponge. Then the whole leg needs to be dressed. The leg is draped with sheets, with a hole cut out of it around the knee to allow operation.

            There are many layers to cut through with the scalpel; the skin, fat, muscle, and tissue. As you cut, you have to use a certain tool to cauterize the blood. This tool simply singes the area of the skin that’s bleeding. This is done to prevent too much blood loss and to keep the area clean and easier to operate on. Once the knee is visible, the leg is then elevated to an angle so that the knee bone is better exposed. Some of the tools used are actually quite interesting. The next tool used is a small saw, which removes and sculpts the bone. It doesn’t take off huge chunks off the bone, but rather shaves it off.

            Then a metal piece is hammered into the bone to act as a new knee. I know, hammering nails into someone’s knee bone doesn’t sound pleasant, and neither does have metal in your knee, but it has to stay in there. After the metal is secure, it’s covered with a cement type mixture and smoothed out to look, act and feel more like a bone. It wouldn’t work if the metal was left alone because of the sharp edges. The cement mixture looks and feels just like a knee bone.

            After the procedure, the patient needs to be sewn back up. The proper medical term is sutured. This means taking a large needle and medical thread and sewing the patient up, layer by layer. The final layer, which is the skin, is usually stapled together to ensure a strong bond and healthy heal.  

Change of Blog Topic

In the past, I’ve blogged about music and theatre, and how it ties in to my everyday life. I’ve recently decided to change my topic to medicine. More specifically, different types of medical procedures and how I plan to go into medicine for my career. I’ve always been fascinated by the medical world, and will be sharing some links to some interesting medical procedure videos and then talking about them in my blog. I hope to inform people about how complex medical procedures really are and how interesting it really is.

            Keep in mind that I will not be performing these procedures in my future career. I’ll be a part of them, but I will not be the one doing the surgery. I plan to be an ER nurse, but not a doctor or a surgeon. Nevertheless, I still want to be informed on how these things work so I know what to expect.

            There are so many interesting and somewhat gross surgeries that go on in a hospital. A skin graft surgery is one of them. A skin graft is a live and healthy piece of skin taken from a part of the body that has a large surface area and is put on the open wound. The most common place of the skin for a skin graft to be taken is the thigh, because it’s one of the largest surface areas on the body that would cause the least discomfort, compared to skin being removed from the back or stomach. Once the skin is removed, it is sutured onto the injured area. The skin cells “welcome” the new skin and allow it to heal back to the body as if nothing ever happened. This is because the skin is still from that person’s body, just a different area, and the new skin is healthy, containing healthy cells. This procedure is usually done to a burn victim, or to someone who had a skin eating virus. The healthy area that had skin removed for the skin graft heals quickly because of the amount of healthy cells within it.