Surgery Godfather-Chapter 464 - 424: The Tiger’s Tail

Yang Ping had made some modifications to the curved drilling technique for the reconstruction of cross ligaments in children.

The key point was to make the new surgical method widespread. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be good if it couldn’t be replicated.

Ultimately, it would disappear over time, just like some unique skillsets of old traditional doctors.

Of course, the spread of new technology would still follow the conventional hierarchy. Director Gao Yuan would be among the first to benefit from this due to his proximity.

Almost everyday, he was filled with fervor, in a state of excitement due to his thirst for new knowledge. Following Yang Ping, given time, he would become a top expert who others in the field would admire.

A soldier who doesn’t want to become a general isn’t a good soldier, and likewise, a doctor who doesn’t aim for expertise isn’t a good doctor.

This was how Gao Yuan thought. He was an ambitious doctor who wanted to be at the top of his field.

As long as there was time, he’d hang out at the comprehensive orthopedics department, shadowing Yang Ping, even if he learned only one sentence per day, he felt it was worthwhile.

The colleagues at Orthopedics jokingly called Director Gao an "off-record postgraduate", a moniker which he simply laughed off when he heard about it.

Naturally, he wouldn’t miss Yang Ping’s first real large-scale ward rounds when he returned from the United States.

He knew that Yang Ping liked powder-free rubber gloves and used a sanitizer gel to clean his hands after taking off the gloves. Thus, during every ward rounds, Gao brought a bag containing these items to fill in when others were not prepared or weren’t fast enough.

At first, Gao Yuan couldn’t understand some of Yang Ping’s new theories and surgeries, but that was okay. After repetitive pondering, he eventually grasped them. He thought about it when eating, when sleeping, even when going to the restroom. The key was he was shameless. If he didn’t understand, he would ask, no matter the situation. As long as there was an opportunity, he would ask for clarification.

Furthermore, the more he learned later on, the easier Director Gao found his studies, feeling as if he had passed the bottleneck stage and was now delving into a wide ocean of knowledge.

Initially, Song Zimo didn’t think much of Director Gao, deeming him to be fawning excessively. However, gradually he began to like him, realizing that Gao’s attentiveness wasn’t malicious. He simply wanted to learn more from Yang Ping. Sometimes when he saw Director Gao jammed with standardized training students and graduate students, he couldn’t help but admire him.

The ward round team moved on to the case of the fierce guy who was transferred from the spinal surgery.

Apart from a slight pain at the puncture site, the patient’s preoperative symptoms had completely disappeared. He could have been discharged, but he insisted on staying a few more days in the hospital for peace of mind.

The guy was lying on the bed, shirtless, working out his back muscles. When he saw the doctor coming for rounds, he quickly put on a shirt.

"No more pain?" Yang Ping asked him.

"Absolutely no pain!" The patient nodded. His life without pain was as pleasant as a breeze.

"Lie down, let me see!" Yang Ping wanted to give him a simple examination, starting from the prone position, to determine whether the postoperative symptoms had rebounded.

The patient lay properly: "Doctor Yang, you not only saved me but also saved the two doctors who operated on me previously. If it weren’t for you, I would definitely cause trouble for them. I can summon three thousand brothers with just one phone call." The patient reversed his hand to show three fingers.

Yang Ping just ignored him. He had met all types of patients.

Now that the patient’s problem had been solved, Yang Ping wasn’t worried about him causing trouble to the doctors. It was just bluster.

For Director Qin, the problem that had been perplexing him was solved by Yang Ping in just a few minutes.

Of course, for such case, Yang Ping had never considered it to be particularly difficult.

To Yang Ping, a problem that could be solved by surgery was really no problem at all!

He pulled the patient’s clothes aside to reveal the two anterior superior iliac spines. Pointing at the patient’s waist, Yang Ping said, "How comes your tiger is missing a tail?"

The tiger tattooed on the patient’s back originally had a mighty tail at the waist, but now the tail had disappeared.

"Really?"

The patient promptly twisted his head to see, indeed, his tail was gone.

A magnificent tiger with no tail. What a sight!

"Where’s the tail? ---" The patient creased his brow.

Yang Ping motioned for him to lower his head and not to look up. "It was probably wiped off during the disinfection before the surgery. The disinfectant contains alcohol, an organic solvent. The quality of your ink wasn’t particularly good."

Once he said this, the ward erupted in laughter. Even the eyes of the patient in the next bed, which previously held admiration and fear, immediately turned scornful and contemptuous. The social big brother’s image had completely collapsed.

The patient’s face turned red immediately. He had just been bragging to the other patients about how he’d single-handedly faced dozens of enemies and established his reputation in the underworld.

"Doctor---" the patient wanted to say something.

"Lie down properly! Otherwise, I’ll wipe off the tiger’s head too." Yang Ping began his examination.

Afterwards, Yang Ping took off his gloves and dropped them into a yellow trash bag next to him. He pumped some disinfectant gel onto his hands and rubbed them together.

"You can be discharged, go home. You are a taxi driver, right? Rest for a week and strengthen your back and waist muscles. Then you can go back to work normally after a week." Yang Ping concluded the ward round of the fierce guy.

I never told him that I drive a taxi. How does he know? Did this doctor also practice fortune telling?

The patient quickly got up and sat at the head of the bed, watching as Yang Ping left the ward.

"How do you know he drives a taxi? He said he was a boss." Little Five was also puzzled.

The others wanted to know the answer too. They had been through too many serious and rigid rounds of ward visits, and they liked Yang Ping’s relaxed atmosphere. It was neither rigid nor frivolous.

"When you do a physical examination, you can figure out some patient’s occupations, then you’ve mastered it, so consider this a question for you all. Occupation is also part of the symptomatology," Song Zimo explained to the young doctors.

The next few patients were all suffering from severe, rare cases of spinal deformity.

Most of the doctors who have come for further training are doing so for the correction of spinal deformities.

Professor Hu was one of the first to come for the training. This leading physician from Xiehe Hospital, with his gold-rimmed glasses and meticulous demeanor, took the training seriously, like a student.

Before meeting Yang Ping, Professor Hu was quite resistant to Professor Liang’s arrangement. But after meeting Yang Ping, that resistance disappeared completely, and he just wanted to make the most of these three months to learn and improve every day.

Every patient with spinal deformity in the department is a cause for concern, some even have torsion and displacement of thoracoabdominal organs.

Director Hu was keen to see how Yang Ping would handle these cases, especially that of a six-year-old child with severe spinal deformity.

However, Yang Ping was not in a hurry. For the correction of spinal deformity, during the surgery on Lu Gang, he had already created a whole new theory of correction, with a new surgical method designed specifically for it.

He wanted to see more cases of spinal deformity and apply this surgical method in real-world cases.

This surgical method, although so far only has been successful in Lu Gang’s case in the real world, Yang Ping has practiced successfully in countless cases in the system space, after continuous improvements, it is very mature.

He planned to gather some more cases and then publish another paper, specifically discussing this new theory and method.

This theory will be a larger innovation following the three-dimensional correction of spinal deformity.

The period when a deluge of papers is being published is coming soon; Yang Ping’s previously submitted papers will be published one after the other. The papers "Balance adjustment of multiligament reconstruction of the knee joint" and "Balance adjustment of multidirectional instability reconstruction of shoulder joint" have been published in AJSM.

The cases of Yu Shuilian and Lu Gang, as case reports, have also been successfully published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"Application of Trauma Surgical System Engineering", "Application of Precise Vascular Selection Occlusion in Trauma Surgery", "Analysis on the Cause of Trauma Death and Its Treatment" are scheduled later, the manuscripts are in the queue and have not yet been published.

"Application of a Novel Paediatric Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction Surgery Method" was once again submitted to AJSM.

Within a year, dropping papers like popcorn in these top medical journals, Professor Hu Guolin could hardly believe it.

For this six-year-old patient with spinal deformity, even the smartest osteotomy seems unsuitable.

No worries, Yang Ping has another method. He only lacks real-world cases. This method doesn’t require osteotomy correction, only an orthotic device needs to be implanted inside the patient’s body, which can continuously and precisely adjust the deformity in the reverse direction.

Based on Ilizarov’s theory of distraction osteogenesis, the vertebrae and soft tissues slowly deform under this tension, finally returning to their normal posture.

Actually, Ilizarov’s theory has been widely used in limb deformities. Orthopedic surgeons represented by Qin Sihe have applied the external fixator to the correction of limb deformities. No surgery is required to correct the deformity, and it stands unique in the world.

What Yang Ping wants to do is to design such an internal orthotic device to correct spinal deformities.

This will be another first.

The existence of the system space makes these firsts mature when they appear.

However, each experiment consumes a lot of points. Otherwise, Yang Ping’s pace of innovation would be faster.

Therefore, he must constantly challenge high-difficulty surgeries in reality in order to get points and keep the system space running.

After going around the ward, Professor Hu felt a tremendous pressure on behalf of Yang Ping. Not to mention the other patients, just these few with spinal deformity were already headache-inducing.

How should surgery be done on that six-year-old with severe spinal deformity?

Also, an eighteen-year-old with spinal deformity, combined with severe thoracoabdominal organ displacement deformity. How should the organs be handled?

Any of these patients would require the combined effort of the whole hospital at Xiehe, and even then the surgery might not be satisfactory at the end.

At other hospitals, they were basically too scared to handle it. The family members of the patients also said that after making a round, some doctors pointed out: "Go to Sanbo in Nandu and find Yang Ping. If he doesn’t dare to do it, just give up, no one else dares to take this surgery."

That patient with spinal deformity and organ deformity has been to 301 several times. They said: "After the spinal correction, the patient will die of organ failure. Maintain the status quo."

"Are you -- really ready to handle these patients?" Professor Hu Guolin asked worriedly.

Yang Ping’s voice was a bit heavy: "If we don’t admit these patients, there’s nowhere else for them to go."

"Song Zimo, have their tests completed, and arrange a time to discuss it. The six-year-old child might be a bit tricky. Explain to the family that the surgery won’t be soon. Pay attention to the way you speak, give them confidence, don’t make them think that we’re politely refusing them."

This patient is a child, and his growth has to be taken into account, which is very complicated. He still needs to further verify the surgical plan.

At this point, Director Han called: The team from 301 will arrive at Sanbo Hospital in three days. He needs to prepare himself well.