Starting The Day With A Spine Decompression

Maxime Le Calvé

Starting The Day With A Spine Decompression

Getting an impression, understanding a certain technique or picking up a strategy for solving a problem can be very thrilling incentives to ›just watch‹.

by Maxime Le Calvé

Published onOct 25, 2022

Audioguide English

— Hmm, I might have to look in the OR schedule what was this one about. Anna, can you help me with this one?

— From the way the room is set up - the surgical instruments, the vis-à-vis assistant position, and from what you can glimpse on screen - this could be a lumbar decompression surgery, possibly followed by some sort of spinal instrumentation. At some point, if you don’t understand the surgeon’s urge to solve a quite specific problem, all interventions look the same. My attending supervisor at Brigham’s used to say neurosurgery is quite boring if you must limit yourself to just watching. I would like to add, it certainly depends on your motivation to be there in the first place. Getting an impression, understanding a certain technique or picking up a strategy for solving a problem can be very thrilling incentives to ›just watch‹.

Next: Metastasis Removal in OR 12

License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)

Comments

Carlos Rauert:

Ich finde die Collagetechnik aus Zeichnungen und Fotos sehr interessant. Ich frage mich, wie die Chirurgen und das andere Personal darauf reagieren, wenn jemand mit im OP-Saal steht und sie fotografiert und Bilder zeichnet…

Marianne Carlsen:

Just noticed by the second look that parts of photos were included.

This visualization captures the general atmosphere in an OR perfectly.

Anna B:

Je länger man das Bild anschaut, desto mehr entdeckt man. Es ist erstaunlich, wie Foto und Zeichnung verschmelzen. Ich mags :)

Anna L. Roethe:

To get some basic ideas about the acquisition of implicit knowledge in surgery, see Dawes & Lens 2007 and Masters et al. 2008. How fascinating, actually, that your motor memory builds so much on imagination and imitation.

Anna L. Roethe:

Dawes, Martin, and Marko Lens. “Knowledge Transfer in Surgery: Skills, Process and Evaluation.” Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England 89, no. 8 (November 2007): 749–53.
Masters, R. S. W., C. Y. Lo, J. P. Maxwell, and N. G. Patil. “Implicit Motor Learning in Surgery: Implications for Multi-Tasking.” Surgery 143, no. 1 (January 2008): 140–45.