Week 8: Katelyn

 This week was the eighth and final week of immersion and I have continued to experience a variety of opportunities this week.

For research this week, I continued to mark the anatomical landmarks used in the robotic surgery plan. From these anatomical landmarks, the femurs will be cut to mimic those made during surgery and then will be analyzed for BMD. 

During the clinic this week, I saw a wide array of patients including bone health work-ups, pain follow-ups, post-ops, and others. One case that stood out to me this week was a metabolic bone health follow-up. This particular patient had a history of 13 years of Fosamax, an atypical femur fracture, and breast cancer. The atypical femur fracture is a known risk associated with usage of bisphosphonates (e.g. Fosamax) and the risk is known to increase with prolonged usage. Due to this history, the patient was hesitant about using a bisphosphonate type drug again, but needs one to come off of the current anabolic treatment. Without using an anti-resorptive to transition off of an anabolic treatment, it is more likely that the improvements in BMD will decline more rapidly. 

In the OR this week, I saw a CMN. I have seen this procedure multiple times, but it is interesting to continue to learn more. Notably, this time I saw a case where there was no need for compressive screws. Typically, such compression is needed to make union between the fracture sites, but this case was a nondisplaced fracture meaning that compression wasn’t necessary. I also learned about the importance of the placement of the guide wires during this procedure since it dictates the placement of implants later on.

Looking back on this entire experience, it was very educational to see such a wide variety of cases within orthopedics. In particular, I have learned a lot about how treatment works for metabolic bone diseases which will be useful for my research back upstate.

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