Body language: UCLA's surgical residents sharpen their skills in special lab

Under the glare of operating-room lights, six UCLA neurosurgery residents embarked on a rare adventure into the human body. As they started cutting into three bodies, Dr. Warwick Peacock, professor of surgery, encouraged them onward. “That should be the linea alba,” he said in his gentle South African accent. “There are some adhesions. Always stick your finger in to make sure you’re not cutting into the bowel. It spoils the day.” Incisions made, the residents approached the spine from the front, sawing through the sternum, moving beyond the lungs and following the rib head to the pedicle, then removing a thoracic disc on each body — in two hours. Completing a discectomy in two hours on a living patient would be extraordinary. But this was no OR. The bodies are cadavers, and the bitter and antiseptic scent of embalming fluid, not blood, fills the air. In UCLA’s Surgical Science Laboratory — one of the few of its kind dedicated to the training of surgical residents — the fledgling surgeons can practice and make mistakes. They bubble with excitement, viewing anatomy rarely seen in this era of minimally invasive surgery and computer modeling: lungs, the front of the spine, the aorta. For Dr. Peacock, an emeritus pediatric neurosurgeon — who developed new techniques for treating children with cerebral palsy by first trying these techniques out on cadavers — teaching residents and exploring the human body on a daily basis has been “one of the most fascinatin...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news