Josette Vigil - Scott Rodeo - Week 3

 This week, I continued my clinical shadowing with Dr. Rodeo. I was able to see lots of patients recovering from various knee surgeries, including ACL repairs, total joint replacements, and meniscus repairs. Through these visits I learned a lot about physical therapy regimens for knee recovery. Most surgical recoveries involve a high degree of quadriceps and core strengthening in order to regain full range of motion and strength in the limb. Learning what types of exercises, and at which timepoints those plans are recommended was very insightful, as my own work involves an injury and exercise model.

In the clinic, I was exposed to various forms of injection therapies for knee cartilage and tendon degeneration, such as platelet-rich plasma, hyaluronic acid, and steroid injections. By listening to Dr. Rodeo counsel patients on their best options, I have learned a lot about when each type of therapeutic is most effective, and in what clinical contexts.

More complex shoulder cases involving involving rotator cuff tears, muscle damage, bursitis, and adhesive capsulitis provided really unique learning opportunities for me, since I have had less exposure to shoulder injuries in my own research. Seeing MRIs of the soft tissue of the shoulder really helped me understand both the anatomy of the area, and also the injuries themselves. Dr. Rodeo provided useful guidance on how to read MRIs for tendon and ligament injury, and what specifically constituted areas of concern in these cases.

I also kept up my work in Dr. Rodeo's laboratory, where I have been getting acquainted with tendon harvest, cell digestion, and preparation so that I can employ a FlexCell in vitro model of tendon strain in analyzing cell type differentiation under loading. I have been doing lots of background reading on different tendon cell lineages, and factors driving differentiation to best set up an experiment that answers relevant questions within the scope of the next 5 weeks.