Week 7: Adam

 This week was heavy in the OR and in the clinic. I saw a few different types of chronic wounds, which provided an interesting learning opportunity to look at the stages of healing, and look at how the body adapts and responds to chronic injury. I also learned a lot about wound cleaning, debridement, and maintenance. Some of the chronic wounds required skin grafts, so I got another chance to see dermal templates used in the OR. One thing I noticed was that for more invasive surgeries such as the spinal surgeries that I saw this week, while the team is able to close the surgical site in layers from the inside out in order to minimize the scar and promote healing, the wound still takes a very long time to close and often results in a contour deformity even after it is fully healed. I wonder if it would be possible to make implants similar to a dermal template that are meant for the deeper layers below the dermis in order to promote healing. In the lab, I learned some more data analysis techniques for multiplexed immunofluorescence imaging, and started my first antibody optimization experiment.