I was able to spend my 18th birthday in the OR which was the best birthday gift I could have ever asked for! My day with Dr. Hennig was jam packed full of new and interesting things. The first of the two surgeries I watched today was a torn ACL repair. Since the ACL is located in the knee joint, there is very little blood flow and therefor trying to salvage and repair the torn ACL doesn't work. Instead the surgeon will take a graft from somewhere else. Patients have two options- an autograft or an allograft. An autograft is taken from the patient and the patient has the choice of using his/her patellar tendon, hamstring tendon, or quadricep tendon. Each of these choices have their pros and cons. The other option is an allograft, which is a graft taken from a cadaver. For a young and avid athlete like the patient we had today it is usually recommended for the patient to have an autograft of his/her hamstring tendon, which is what we did today. First Dr. Hennig harvested the hamstring tendon which was really cool to watch. Then after cleaning out the area where the new graft was going to go, a tunnel was made in the femoral head and the top of the graft was pulled through there and anchored down, the graft then went through the joint and the other end was anchored down in the tibial head! The procedure had so many different parts to it and was half open and half done arthroscopic.
The second surgery I watched was a rotator cuff repair as well as a repair of the labrum. Because of the location and type of tear of the rotator cuff, the biceps tendon had to be disconnected and then after the repair of the cuff and labrum, the patient was turned and his shoulder was opened up to reattach the biceps tendon. The end of the biceps tendon was cut off and I was given the opportunity to hold the tendon, pretty cool birthday gift right?
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