Day 9

Today was one of the best days in this internship, even though it was tiring. Today, I spent  most of the day in the operating room watching a specific lumbar fusion called an XLIF (extreme lateral interbody fusion). I'm not going to go into what all of that means, but they start the process by going in through the side of the body where the herniated or degenerated disc is. After the incision, they use a dilater to find where the nerves are. Then they remove the disc and place a spacer with a bone graft in it. Then, they stitch the wound up and flip the patient onto his/her stomach. Then the surgeon makes an incision in the back to get to the vertebrae that needs fusing. After that, a cage made from pedicle screws and metal bars is inserted where the fusion is needed. Then the patient is stitched up and that's it. There's actually a lot more involved, but I'm not going to go into detail. The patient I viewed today had a 4 level fusion. She was fused from L2-S1(2nd lumbar vertebrae-1st sacral vertebrae). I was amazed at how smooth most of the procedure went. I  was in the operating room for about 5 hours, so it is not a short procedure. I think the time spent was worth it.