The Surgeon's Studio

Professor Tian closed his eyes to make sure that he is not dreaming.

These things would only happen in dreams, did he think wrongly?

Dr. Zhou was happily suctioning the blood.

He thought that Professor Tian’s skills had improved significantly. All of the vertebral resection surgeries that he had participated in were all performed with massive blood loss. They would have gone through 5 units of red blood cells at this stage of surgery.

Yet, the surgery today was so clean.

Usually, suction was crucial in this step. Before the surgery, Dr. Zhou was very nervous about this. If he screwed up the suction, the professor would skin him alive.

To his surprise, the surgery today turned out to be so successful!

The weather was good, he was in a good mood, Professor Tian’s skills were great!

Out of a sudden, the surgery was halted abruptly. Dr. Zhou and the scrub nurse were a little confused. She asked, “Professor Tian, are you feeling okay?”

Professor Tian was retracing the entire surgery from the very beginning, replaying in his mind scene by scene. He completely ignored the scrub nurse’s concern.

Dr. Zhou and the scrub nurse were stunned.

The surgery was very successful. Why did Professor Tian close his eyes repeatedly? Was he gathering energy to break another record?

If so, let him be as the patient did not bleed much. Right then… Dr. Zhou noticed that only 40 minutes had passed since the surgery started.

Under usual circumstances, it would take at least 2 hours.

Most of the time would be spent on the search for bleeding sources.

A few minutes later, Professor Tian opened his eyes slowly.

“Rongeur,” he said softly.

The scrub nurse placed a rongeur onto his hand.

Professor Tian calmly suppressed his emotions and used the sharp-edged tip to remove the tumor tissues on the vertebra. He kept the posterior part of the vertebra as a landmark to avoid damaging the spinal cord or nerve roots.

This surgery was executed so perfectly that it was textbook-worthy.

However, Professor Tian was aware that this was not because of his extraordinary skills, it was because the surgical field was extremely clean.

He resected the tumor on the vertebra carefully to protect the healthy tissues from implantation metastasis.

He gently separated the adhesions and used the dissector to push the posterior part of the vertebra forward until it collapsed. The purpose of this was to remove the tumor completely without risk damaging the spinal cord.

There were no signs of tumor infiltration in the adjacent vertebral disc. However, Professor Tian also resected the bone right up to the cartilaginous endplate and removed everything between the superior and inferior endplates to provide a secured bone graft bed.

This procedure should lose around 1 liter of blood but… there was only 100 to 150 mL of blood up until this stage.

Professor Tian was keeping track mentally, but he was already numb to the situation.

This was one freaky surgery!

Other than his skills, was the patient extremely lucky? What other possible reasons could there be?

The interventional doctor?

Impossible! No matter how great the interventional doctor was, no one could accomplish this.

Professor Tian continued the surgery according to protocol numbly.

He harvested the bone graft from the posterior iliac crest according to the length of the bone defect between the vertebrae.

Right then, the condition of surgery was back to what the professor conceived as “normal”.

There was a lot of bleeding from the posterior iliac crest harvest.

He was relieved.

Dr. Zhou was stunned as everything was a breeze prior to this. He scrambled with the aspirator to suction and tried to stop the bleeding with dry gauze.

The surgery took a sharp turn.

After the bleeding had stopped, Professor Tian continued with the surgery.

Usually, the bone graft would be slightly longer than the actual bone defect by 2 to 3 mm. After the harvest, the ends would be refined by cutting with an electric bone saw and tied together using non-absorbable nylon sutures.

The bone graft would be inserted from the dural sac anterolaterally into the bone defect. Then, it could be filled with bone chips to promote reossification.

Shape-memory alloy, bone cement, one step after another.

The surgery was finished after 2 hours and 12 minutes.

Including the blood loss after the posterior iliac crest bone grafting, the total amount of blood was less than 500 mL. The surgery was unbelievably successful.

The patient was sent back to the ward after recovering from anesthesia. Dr. Zhou was smiling brightly.

The surgery was so successful that they did not touch any of the 20 units of frozen red blood cells prepared prior to surgery. He felt a little awkward not having any transfusion and gave 2 units to the patient as safety.

After all, there was 500 mL of blood loss.

“Professor Tian, your skills are getting more advanced!” Dr. Zhou raised his thumb and complimented him.

Professor Tian kept going through the surgery while he rested, trying to find out what made it so successful.

He knew that his skill was definitely out of the equation.

This meant that it was due to the interventional doctor. Even though he found it difficult to believe, it was the truth.

Professor Tian had officially become Detective Tian.

“Little Zhou, where’s the interventional department? Bring me there, I want to take a look,” Professor Tian said.

“We don’t have an interventional department. Currently, all the interventional surgeries were being carried out by the chief resident in the emergency ward,” Dr. Zhou replied.

“Only one doctor?” Professor Tian started to doubt his speculations.

“Yeah, his assistant was transferred from the ICU. Oh, I also saw a foreigner helping him with the surgery yesterday, and said that he’s from Heidelberg University.”

Oh, there was an external specialist present.

Professor Tian was relieved when he finally found the “truth”.

At least he knew that his brain was not faulty.

“The professor did the lumbar artery embolization?” Professor Tian asked.

“No, the foreigner might not be a professor. I’m not sure about his status, he has a Chinese name, called Lil Fugui.”

The conversation took a new turn. Lil Fugui?

“It is funny to hear him speak Northeastern Mandarin,” Dr. Zhou could not resist his chuckle when he thought of Professor Rudolf Wagner.

“Chief Zheng from the emergency department performed the surgery while Li Fugui assisted him,” Dr. Zhou said.

What nonsense was this!

Professor Tian could not figure out what really happened. All of this was beyond his comprehension.

“Let’s go.” Professor Tian glanced at his phone. He still had some time before flying back to Imperial Capital because the surgery was cut short.

Both of them checked on the patient once more before heading to the emergency wing.

On their way there, Professor Tian asked about the interventional surgery under the emergency department of Sea City General Hospital.

Was the doctor’s level at pelvic fracture embolizations and gynecological embolizations?

That should not make his surgery so successful.

Weird.

Dr. Zhou and a doubtful Professor Tian reached the emergency ward.

“Lil Fugui, there are two surgeries tomorrow. You can come earlier to send the patient to the operating room.” Zheng Ren’s voice could be heard.

“Yes, boss. What surgery are they?” Professor Rudolf asked in a Northeastern accent.

“Secondary TIPS surgery to retrieve the shunt and another TIPS surgery.”

“Uhm, I won’t act rashly. Don’t you worry, boss.”

Professor Tian was stunned when he heard the Northeastern accent…

He walked into the office and saw Professor Rudolf Wagner standing beside a young doctor, talking in a very respectful manner.

This… this guy looked familiar.

F*ck!

It suddenly dawned on Professor Tian that this person was Professor Rudolf Wagner that he met twice at Heidelberg University!