Week 3: Adam

 This week I spent some time in Dr. Spector's outpatient clinic shadowing pre-operative planning and post-operative follow-up appointments. In the clinic I also learned more about skin grafting and the wound healing process. This translated well to the OR, since I was able to watch some skin grafts be placed over surgical sites from tumor resections. I also watched a DIEP flap breast reconstruction, which is a very interesting procedure where skin, fat, and blood vessels from the abdomen were used to rebuild a patient's breasts after a bilateral mastectomy. The DIEP reconstruction is a microsurgical procedure, since individual blood vessels in the tissue are reconnected in order to supply blood to the reconstructed breast. They also performed a microneurorrhaphy on the patient, connecting some of the nerves from the abdomen to potentially provide sensation to the reconstructed tissue. This was the first microsurgery I have seen and it was really interesting to watch. In Dr. Spector's lab this week, I learned how to use the microtome to section tissue from paraffin blocks, and also learned how to stain with hematoxylin and eosin to visualize tissue microanatomy. This will be useful to confirm the results of the immunofluorescent staining later.