The clinical services team (OT, PT, SP, RN, SW) meets once a month to discuss recent issues, make multidisciplinary decisions, and also for professional development lectures. Some of the young physios I work with (2 graduated last year from Curtin) told me before the meeting that "it sucks the life out of you" so I was really looking forward to a rivetting couple of hours in the boardroom....
One of the more interesting parts of the meeting was when one of my supervisors gave some feedback about some spinal surgery she'd seen the previous week at PMH. It was a little DMD boy with a massive scoliosis who was having spinal fusion surgery. I didn't realise this but they actually chop off all the spinous processes (in this case T4 to L4) and sprinkle all these shreds of bone over the back to induce bone growth and grafting. The idea is to make the body think that it's one long bone cut into 13 pieces and needs to fused again. The surgeons took almost 3 hours to just put in central lines and drips because apparently it was very hard to find his veins etc. Because of the DMD, his muscle was really poor quality and full of fatty globules... apparently the incision was 15cm deep (from skin to spine)!
I got to see a girl later on in the week with Friedreich's ataxia who'd just had the same surgery. I saw the photos of what she was like pre-op compared to what was sitting in front of me, and it was amazing. It was like she was a different patient, her spine was so unrecogniseable. A bit wierd running your finger down her back and not feeling any spinous processes though...
No comments:
Post a Comment