Jenny Deng-Dr.Spector-Week 6: Successful Spheroids + Rat Tail Collagen Cont. + Major Head and Neck Surgery

In this week's didactic meetings, Dr. Jacoby presented information on hand calls for emergencies and splinting. Dr. Jacoby specializes in taking care of everything below the elbow, ranging from radius and carpal fractures to nerve and soft tissue injuries. He mentioned that every consult gets an x-ray, all infections get labs, and all flexor tendon and digit nerve injuries get Doppler exams. If the injury is not an emergency the Green's textbook on hand surgery apparently has all the answers. He then went on to discuss interesting cases, like Neonatal Forearm Compartment Syndrome, flexor synovitis, and paint injection injury. Overall, it was interesting hearing about the various ways a hand can get injured and the methods to treat them. 

In clinic this week, Dr. Spector followed up on a post-op septoplasty patient, who I saw last week in the OR. It was fascinating to see how swollen the nose appeared, but Dr. Spector assured the patient that all the swelling was going away. 

In the OR this week, there was a major head and neck surgery for a patient with recurrent cancer in their mandible. Unfortunately, a prior reconstructive surgery that placed the fibula in the jaw had to be removed. Dr. Jacoby was there to isolate an anterolateral thigh flap for a soft tissue reconstruction of the area-- and used a Doppler to check on the flap during surgery. Dr. Kuhel was operating in the head and neck region to excise the fibula and open up the neck to connect the flap's vessels. For a patient like this, radioactive cesium seeds could be used as local radiation therapy to hopefully combat the cancerous cells. 

Finally, for research this week, I saw the continuation of the rat tail collagen protocol. Rat tail tendons had been submerged in 1% acetic acid for a week (see image below). The solution appears cloudier. Centrifugation and harvesting of the separated pure collagen layer occurred this week. The collagen was aliquoted and will need to be lyophilized. Furthermore, after troubleshooting the previous spheroid making attempt, this time compact spheroids were made. I intend to utilize these spheroids along with patient derived breast tissue to study breast cancer invasion. 


From left to right: Extracting rat tail tendons, tendons in 1% acetic acid on Day 0, and tendons in 1% acetic acid on Day 7. 



On the right are the success spheroids showing compactness. 


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