Ear Nose & Throat

So far I love surgery. I am on ENT for the next couple of weeks and I have to say that ENT is killer. I grew up across the yard from one of the most world renown ENT surgeons and I tormented his family on a regular basis as a child. I mentioned his name to several of the attending physicians and the residents and they were all very interested to know that I had scratched His daughter's cornea with sand, and blew up his mailbox and shot out his window with a BB gun (accident). 

What is so cool about ENT? Well, it is a surgery subspecialty and you work on illnesses (lots of cancers) in the head, neck, ears, mouth and throat. You get to do lots of surgery and manage patients. Also many do cosmetic facial surgery as well; eye lifts, nose jobs, etc. The money is bountiful and the lifestyle is great!

Today we had ENT clinic in the morning and surgery in the afternoon / evening. I saw lots of cool cases. My first 2 patients were out last night having dinner and on the way back to their car they were jumped and smashed in the face by some thugs and robbed. They were hit by bricks in the face. One of them had an orbital blow out. Basically the bone that makes up the eye socket was fractured. The problem with this is that the eyeball and muscle / tissue leak out the hole in the socket into the brain and can cause lots of problems and become entrapped leading to blindness and paralysis of the eye. It has to be repaired with a titanium plate. The surgery is very fascinating and can be done without making incisions by maneuvering around the eyeball. The other gentleman had his mandible fractured by the brick and he will have to have surgery + plus his jaw wired shut. I felt bad for him, he is defending his PhD dissertation in a few weeks and will have his jaw wired shut. 

Nearly every case I saw today had interesting pathology involved. Then this afternoon I was the first assistant on surgery of a lady where we removed huge keloid out of a ladies ear. It was such a cool surgery. It was so exhilarating and I could see doing surgery but the jury is not out on yet on life style. It certainly is interesting. 

Tomorrow I have cancer clinic and Friday I have surgery all day and there are a couple very interesting cases on the schedule. One of the cases is the removal of a paraganglioma that is infiltrating the carotid artery. This is a rare surgery. I will explain what a paraganglioma is in a another blog. I will report on it.