Lithoracotomy Observation Examples

During the day, I observed parts of two different surgeries.

The first client was in surgery for a thoracotomy to perform a lung biopsy. The surgeon said that the chest x-ray showed infiltrates and that pulmonologist wanted a tissue sample. The patient was a male approximately 60 years old. He had a large barrel chest, which might indicate COPD.

The procedure involved making an incision in the chest between two ribs. The surgeon continued cutting and cauterizing the incision until he reach the right lung. He then isolated and excised a 1 inch by half inch piece of lung. It looked like a little lung sock. The sample was placed into a specimen container. The next step of the procedure was to place a chest tube in the patient. He
The nurse was not scrubbed in for this procedure and she floated around helping out. I am not sure what the recorder actually wrote down, but at one point she asked me for my name, so I know she recorded who was in the room. The surgical technologist was the assistant to the surgeon. She managed all the sterile equipment and provided each piece to the surgeon as he
One inserted a foley catheter. One started an arterial line in the wrist. The patient’s chest and both legs were cleaned and disinfected. Since this was a graft procedure, one surgeon would harvest veins from her leg(s) and the other would do the open heart portion. The perfusionist is responsible for the bypass machine. She connects a staggering array of tubes. The anesthesiologist intubated the patient and administered the anesthesia and monitored the patient’s vital signs. He also inserted a Swan-Ganz catheter. He was unable to advance the tip into the pulmonary artery. For this procedure, one of the nurses was scrubbed in and she later assisted in the surgery by holding the heart as the surgeon sutured the