Week 6

This week has been extremely gratifying. On Monday I was supposed to go to the cath lab, but I was never told when to go. Needless to say this was disappointing, but I made up for it later in the week. Instead I finished drawing the hearts in my study, which was a huge relief. I still needed to calculate the mass, but none of the equations I was given worked.
Tuesday I continued to search for equations that would work. I finally found the one that was used in previous studies such as this one, but with one problem: I needed a variable that no one knew how to find (myocardial thickness). This was quite frustrating to say the least, as I had the equation I could use to finish my work, yet I didn’t have one of the needed parts. Tuesday was also the mock presentation, which went quite well.
Wednesday was extremely busy. In the morning I went to the heart catherization lab where I observed three patients. Two of them had little to no plaque buildup in their coronary arteries, so neither of them had to have bypass surgery or stints put in. However, the third patient was not so fortunate, and had extreme plaque buildup in three different areas. Because the heart was not getting enough oxygen and nutrients because of this, they requested that he have a triple bypass. After the cath lab, I went down to the echo lab & learned about the procedure. Dr. Hundley showed me around the lab & explained the pictures obtained through the ultrasounds to me. This helped me understand what they do more and why it is important. Patients go through the echo lab as a screening before they are sent to the cath lab, as heart catherization is an invasive procedure. I also figured out the missing variable in the mass calculations, and was able to complete my work.