Day 2

The rest of my week was spent in the OR with Dr. M. I would meet Dr. M up in the Cardiac ICU at 7:30 for rounds before we would go down to the OR and change into scrubs and watch surgery. In the Cardiac ICU, Dr. M reviews the patients most recent chest X-Rays to look for any changes, he speaks with the doctors and nurses who observed the patients overnight and asks them about heart rate, pressure, urine output, and any changes that occurred. He then goes and checks on the patients himself, looking at their EKGs, making sure their chest tubes and wires are all in place, and asking the patients how they're doing.

This diagram shows how there are two electrical signals in
Atrial Fibrillation. In the cryo-maze procedure, damaging
neurons by freezing them allows to help control the path of
electrical activity, making the heart beat more regular

The first heart surgery I saw was an aortic valve replacement and a cryo-maze procedure to try and fix the patients atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heart rhythm, (see image on the right)  First, Dr. M gained exposure of the heart, and then connected the patient to the bypass machine (heart and lung machine), which occurs by making small incisions on the right atrium and aorta of the heart, so that all of the blood bypasses the heart and lungs. Since there is no blood flow to the heart, the heart can arrest (stop beating), which makes operating on it much easier. Once on bypass, Dr. M started the cryo-maze procedure. In this procedure, a probe is inserted into the different chambers of the heart and it aims to create a "maze" for neuron firing in the heart by freezing parts of the heart. The probe inserted into the heart is about -60 degrees, and this freezes the heart, permanently damaging neurons, and by controlling the damaged neurons, you can create a path, or "maze", for the neurons to fire, which can help fix the irregular heart beat.

After the cryo-maze procedure, Dr. M went on to replace the patients calcified aortic valve (the valve between the aorta and the left ventrical). Dr. M used a valve made from bovine (cow) paracardium to replace the patients leaky valve.

This is an photograph of the new valve
 (the object in the top of the photo) getting sewed in.