Today's lectures were on breasts and pediatric surgery. A pretty well known breast surgeon gave us lecture about breast cancer and the surgical treatments available. I never thought I would say that I would get bored talking about breasts, but never say never. We basically covered all aspects of diagnosing and treating breast pathology. One of the newer concepts is that with certain forms of cancer they administer chemotherapy first and then remove the cancer surgically. They used to head straight to the OR and then do chemotherapy. However, they have found if they can shrink the tumor first it will require less surgery and does not increase mortality of the patient. Another new concept is that they do not recommend self breast exams anymore. Most of the recent data suggests that self breast exams do not decrease breast cancer mortality and in fact increase the amount of unnecessary surgeries. It is still recommended to get regular breast exams done by your physician. Regular mammograms are recommended after 40.
We also had a lecture series on pediatric surgery. I do not find pediatric surgery very interesting. We basically covered all the common surgeries seen in kids like inguinal hernias, pyloric stenosis, etc. I would have rather been in the OR learning about these with hands on experience.
Tomorrow we have 5 surgeries, so it is going to be a long day. I am excited and love the OR. The best surgery tomorrow is a neck tumor removal. This tumor is huge, it is almost as big as the patient's head and highly vascularized. There will be lots of blood which means I will get to tie off lots of blood vessels. It should be cool.
1 comment:
I knew monthly self breast exams were stupid. I hate it when you go to your annual exam and they ask if you do them. You have two choices 1) Lie or 2) tell the truth and then hear a little lecture about why you should do them.
Too bad I just had my annual exam yesterday. I could have given them the latest, most up to date information and saved us all the hassle!
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