Chapter 266
Chapter 266: Chapter 140: Young in Age, Not in Skill. Slowly Turning the Situation Around.
The first assistant, upon hearing this, was instantly furious.
What did that mean?
Wasn’t it a roundabout way of mocking him for being a useless first assistant who couldn’t help?
“Do you think hemostasis is that simple? Just clamp the blood vessel with a pair of hemostatic forceps? Young man, let me tell you, reading books and actual operation are completely different concepts.”
The first assistant sneered with an old-fashioned tone, teaching Zhou Can, the novice.
In his heart, he must be cursing – these young people, always wanting to standout every day.
Not even weighing their own abilities.
“Dr. Ou, may I try using the hemostatic forceps? If I can assist you, that would be best. If not, the destructive power of the hemostatic forceps is controllable.” Zhou Can’s gaze turned to Dr. Ou.
At this moment, Dr. Ou was very distressed.
The patient’s blood vessel was spurting blood, and he had tried pressing down on multiple parts with his hands, but to no avail.
The current situation was extremely unfavorable.
Basically, it was like being trapped in a vicious cycle.
If the bleeding couldn’t be stopped, the blood that kept spurting out would obstruct the view, preventing him from finding the real reason for the unsuccessful electrocoagulation hemostasis.
The last thing a doctor wants in surgery is to damage important nerves, unexplained bleeding, and complications.
All three situations could lead to dire consequences.
Damage to nerves could lead at best to paralysis, at worst to immediate respiratory arrest, cardiac arrest, death.
Unexplained bleeding would likewise lead to death; if the bleeding can’t be stopped, the patient’s chance of survival would be slim, especially with internal bleeding.
Complications could be both intraoperative or postoperative.
Before surgery, doctors ask about allergy history, whether there’s hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, etc. This is to fully consider whether other complications may arise during the operation.
Some patients with heart disease have extremely low tolerance during surgery.
They might get a heart attack from sheer fright before the operation even begins, just from being lifted onto the surgical table. Then, what the doctors have to do is not to perform surgery, but to frantically save the patient.
As for postoperative complications, they used to be overlooked.
Now more and more surgeons consider postoperative complications to be the number one killer.
Take spinal epidural hematoma for example, which can be caused by the patient themselves or possibly from anesthesia during surgery if the lumbar puncture is not done well.
It might not be detected immediately.
Only after the patient becomes paralyzed post-surgery, and upon examination does one find the spinal epidural hematoma.
The location of the hematoma corresponds precisely with where the lumbar anesthesia was administered.
This is merely the simplest of postoperative complications.
Then there’s postoperative lung infection, renal failure, heart and lung failure, and so forth, which go without saying.
Dr. Ou had run out of ideas and was preparing to call for help from superior doctors when he heard Zhou Can volunteering. He looked seriously at this bold trainee for the first time.
Zhou Can had just mentioned that the patient’s unceasing bleeding might be due to damage to the blood vessels beneath the spinal dura during the removal of abnormal vessels, or it could be that he had cut right into a bifurcation of the blood vessel.
These two trains of thought were not something ordinary people could come up with.
Dr. Ou’s regard for Zhou Can’s abilities increased.
“Chen Yue, let him try!”
Dr. Ou told the first assistant.
Basically, he had the mentality of a last-ditch effort, just like a quack trying to revive a dead horse.
As Zhou Can said, the destructive power of the hemostatic forceps is minimal. At most, it would injure the blood vessel. But if it can help him stop the bleeding, then there’s no need for superior doctors to come and rescue.
His face would be saved, and the problem could be resolved.
To call for superior doctors to put out a fire is not something you can just do whenever you wish, there are costs involved.
It could lead to losing points in the eyes of superior doctors, reduction in surgery priority, and doubts about surgical capability.
All these would cause very negative impacts.
News often reports medical incidents in some hospitals, where the doctors involved kept quiet, played down serious issues, and failed to promptly report problems to superior doctors as required, leading to disasters.
Such low-level mistakes are still made.
Do you think the doctors involved are idiots?
Actually, they’re very shrewd.
They just harbored a fluke mentality, thinking they could handle it themselves. That’s why they didn’t report to superior doctors.
Eventually, it led to accidents.
Once Dr. Ou had spoken, the first assistant, whether willing or not, had no choice but to give way.
Zhou Can took the hemostatic forceps passed to him by a nurse, carefully seeking the vascular network of the bleeding point.
But he encountered the same problem as Dr. Ou.
The constantly spurting fresh blood seriously obstructed the view of the spinal dura, which couldn’t be rectified even by continuously suctioning off the accumulated blood.
The bleeding was too rapid.
Moreover, to locate the vessel network, one must begin from the position of the bleeding point.
Zhou Can had long since developed a skill.
He could identify the bleeding point through the ripples of the blood. Now, the bleeding point was very clear – he just needed to identify it through the ‘ripples’, akin to locating a dragon’s pulse in geomancy.
The world’s myriad practices are interconnected, and this bears a remarkable similarity to geomancy.
“The bleeding vessel, the proximal point should be here.”
With that, he clamped a very inconspicuous blood vessel beneath the membrane.
Then a miraculous scene occurred.
The bleeding stopped immediately.
“Incredible, truly incredible!”
Dr. Ou exclaimed with joy.
The first assistant watched Zhou Can, who had stolen the limelight, with a face full of shame.
In the operating room, it’s all about real skill; there’s no room for pretense.
Zhou Can successfully stopping the bleeding showed that his hemostatic ability was indeed superior to his.
Even stronger than Dr. Ou.
“The vessel can’t be clamped for too long, it could damage the vessel and spinal dura. Electrocoagulation hemostasis has been tried multiple times, all unsuccessful. Do you think ligation might stop the bleeding?”