Josette Vigil - Dr. Scott Rodeo - Week 4

This week I continued with my clinical shadowing where I learned a lot more about total knee replacement surgeries. While I had some understanding of these procedures, I didn't realize how regular check-ins, maintenance, and metrics for implant success worked in a clinical context. Hearing more about patient experiences with their surgeries and long-term joint health, I learned the importance of timing for joint surgery. This concept applies beyond replacements--recognizing the difference between pathological joint deterioration (typically seen via MRI) and actual symptomatic progression is vital to ensure that patient's orthopedic health is protected, but also they remain strong and comfortable maintaining regular physical activity. 

Outside of the clinic, Dr. Rodeo's lab manager (Alex Piacentini) showed me how to harvest tail tendons from mice to be used in an in vitro tendon study I will be performing over the next four weeks. I practiced this dissection several times to ensure that I will be able to remove tendons efficiently to prevent cell death. Since tendons have very low cell density, it is important to harvest as much tissue as possible, so that the total tenocyte yield is viable for culture. In Dr. Rodeo's lab, I was able to collaborate with medical students on various tendon histology and imaging practices we use in the Andarawis-Puri lab to help promote analysis on samples collected via a collaboration in Ithaca. Seeing the different multi-photon and second harmonic generation imaging techniques and protocols used here has been very enlightening for my own research, and I hope to continue learning more over the next month. 


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