Chapter 2409: Catching Someone
Ring, ring, ring, an emergency call from the ER, there’s work to be done in the emergency room, Luo Jingming returned to the ER. The family of the patient is waiting for the surgery results in the VIP room.
Zhu Huicang received another call from his old classmate Ren Chongda.
Ren Chongda said, "I went with the students to get a cake for Cao Yong, not sure if it’s spoiled. Don’t tell him yet."
Student Wei scratched his head, thinking if the cake is spoiled, the whole afternoon would have been wasted. Fortunately, later Student Xie wrote a card and made a bouquet.
Hearing that there were other gifts, Ren Chongda nudged the student’s shoulder to quickly go and bring them out.
In the operating room, the sternal retractor needed to be adjusted a second time. After cutting open the pericardium and lifting the edges, the retractor was reinserted, fully exposing the heart, pounding inside, with a rhythmic beat.
It was the first time for Student Pan Shihua to see the heart beat on the operating table, his palms were sweaty, and the nerves at his fingertips seemed ready to tremble. Aspiring to be a cardiac surgeon and directly encountering a living heart, his own heart involuntarily started pounding along.
Student Xie could understand Student Pan’s feelings, recalling how she felt during her first time seeing it, equally excited.
No one expected at this critical moment, the patient’s heart started to stutter, as though moving awkwardly.
Beep, beep, the alarm sound blared incessantly.
Everyone’s expressions turned tense, knowing there wasn’t much time left for the doctors.
"Quick, initiate extracorporeal circulation!" the chief surgeon commanded.
Extracorporeal circulation had been explained before. Since this was an open-heart surgery and not thoracoscopic, connecting extracorporeal circulation was a routine procedure. The doctors needed to directly connect the machine pipes to the major arteries and veins of the heart. The entire setup process for extracorporeal circulation is extremely intricate. A single mistake could easily lead to chaos.
The onlookers heard the young doctors shouting nervously, for a moment worried that the youngsters might not handle the pressure and create confusion.
Seeing the urgency, the procedural genius, Student Duan, stopped reciting like Tang Seng. He exchanged glances with the First Assistant and Second Assistant before taking action.
The first step was separation, starting with the arterial trunk. The chief surgeon, armed with scissors, made an incision on the side of the ascending aorta, and the First Assistant quickly inserted a curved tool, cutting a few shallow to deep strokes to separate the two arterial trunks.
Senior Yoo inhaled sharply: this young student was indeed as impressive as rumored. She had hardly ever seen a female medical student work so adeptly on the operating table.
After separating the arterial trunk, it was the turn of the venous trunk. The curved tool in the First Assistant’s hand was exchanged for forceps, which lifted the ascending aorta while retracting the right atrial appendage, exposing the superior vena cava behind. At this point, a hand switch suddenly occurred. The Second Assistant took over to secure the position with clamps. The chief surgeon grabbed angled scissors to cut the vascular sheath between the superior vena cava and the right pulmonary artery. Usually, this would require the chief surgeon to switch positions and tools again. But not today; the First Assistant directly took a right-angled clamp and, without delay, slipped it along the path opened by the chief surgeon’s angled scissors into the crevice, quickly separating the tissue there and pushing it through to the backside of the superior vena cava, bringing out a blockade strip.
The interlocking hands of the young assistants were a blur to the onlookers, yet there was not a trace of disorder among them. In an extremely short time, what one person might do was completed by several people together, significantly cutting down the time.
Senior Yoo felt her pulse; such teamwork was far more fascinating than solo efforts, worthy of reporting to the leaders. The surrounding air noticeably cooled, as chilly gazes locked onto the observer.