Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The visitation room was already full of people by the time Ling Ran entered the operating theater with his hands positioned vertically over his chest.
As this was the first time radical gastrectomy for stomach cancer was carried out using a laparoscope in Yun Hua Hospital, it was quite a hot topic among surgeons in the hospital. If a person were to look at it from a broader scope, even the General Surgery Department of Yun Hua Provincial Hospital that carried out radical gastrectomy for stomach cancer using a laparoscope before had not performed many cases of it. In short, this surgery was quite a breath of fresh air among the doctors.
If a person were to make comparisons, this surgery could be likened to Spanish cuisine. Even though people who paid quite a bit of attention to food would have heard about it, not many people had tried it before. There were even fewer people who had tried it multiple times and were used to eating it.
The visitation room consisted of doctors who were interested in this surgical method, doctors who were interested in laparoscopy and doctors who were interested in Ling Ran. They easily filled up the entire visitation room. Even the director of the General Surgery Department did not enjoy any special privilege on this occasion. He had no choice but to sit obediently in the front row, and it was impossible for him to enjoy extra legroom.
“Let’s get started.” Ling Ran carried out demonstration surgeries all the time, and he was used to people watching him from the visitation room. He did not find the fact that the visitation room was full of people anything special. In reality, even under normal circumstances, the visitation room was often full whenever Ling Ran carried out surgeries.
Surgeons would get used to many people observing them when they operate sooner or later. For example, the operating theaters of certain large hospitals in Europe and the United States, such as Mayo Clinic, were perpetually full of medical interns as well as foreign visitors. The surgeons in those hospitals had no choice but to get used to it.
Besides, members of the Ling Treatment Group often worked in Operating Theater 1, which was equipped with a visitation room. Even a doctor like Yu Yuan had slowly gotten used to being watched by many people, let alone Lu Wenbin and the other doctors.
Ouyang Kan, who was a high and mighty associate chief physician, though, was not really used to this. However, it only took a moment for him to adapt to the situation. By the time the patient’s abdominal cavity was pumped full of carbon dioxide, Ouyang Kan slowly calmed down as he gazed at the familiar sight of a pneumoperitoneum.
Ouyang Kan always performed open surgery for patients with stomach cancer. But aside from radical gastrectomy for stomach cancer, Ouyang Kan had performed quite a few cases of laparoscopy. It was impossible to stay away from laparoscopy, as most of the open surgeries in the General Surgery Department had been replaced with laparoscopy. It was only a matter of whether surgeons were capable of performing these surgeries well.
Those like Ouyang Kan who rarely performed a laparoscopy and were bad at it usually only used a laparoscopy for appendectomy and intestinal obstruction repair. They mostly did it to put in some practice, and sometimes, they were left with no choice. Those like Ling Ran who were good at it…
Ouyang Kan watched as Ling Ran worked, and a hint of jealousy appeared in his heart.
It only took one look for other people to discern a genius. There was no need for a selection process or to identify the distinguishing characteristics of a genius. Geniuses were born to stand out among the crowd.
As Ouyang Kan watched Ling Ran’s maneuvers, he recalled his journey of learning how to perform laparoscopy. He was more than affected by it. There was practically a storm brewing inside his heart.
Laparoscopy was extremely popular nowadays, and a person would have to go against his conscience to say that Ouyang Kan and the other doctors did not spend time and energy on learning how to use a laparoscope. In reality, to keep up with the times, Ouyang Kan had spent almost a thousand hours practicing laparoscopy.
However, it took a lot for an untalented doctor to learn something.
If Ouyang Kan were still young and familiarizing himself with this surgical method for the first time, he might be able to spend a few hundred hours to learn laparoscopy, just like how he did with open surgery. He could then spend a few hundred hours studying laparoscopy and a few hundred more hours improving himself to build a competitive advantage.
However, Ouyang Kan was no longer young. If he wanted to replace open surgery with laparoscopy, he would at least need to be almost as good at laparoscopy as he was at open surgery. And truth be told, he no longer had what it took to learn a new surgical method.
He was not a genius and was unable to quickly learn how to perform laparoscopy. He was also responsible for his own treatment group and had to spend time on that. Moreover, he did not have a teacher who could guide him in performing laparoscopy. Hence, laparoscopy was basically beyond his reach.
The hospital and even his department would not put any consideration into ways in which a fifty-year-old surgeon could learn a new surgical method. All they wanted was for Ouyang Kan to shine brightly during his last moments in the hospital by being one of the last batches of doctors who performed open surgery.
Only genii who were extraordinarily talented could change directions as they pleased so that they could fully realize their worth in this world.
“No signs of metastases in the abdominal aorta and mesentery.” Ling Ran’s voice was loud and clear, and it immediately snapped Ouyang Kan out of his reverie.
Ouyang Kan nodded as he looked at the screen to show his approval.
“The surface of the intestine is clear.
“There’s no metastases in the pancreas and the transverse mesentery.
“There are no metastases in the retroperitoneal lymph nodes.”
Ling Ran was not in a hurry to remove the tumor from the stomach. Instead, he looked around the primary tumor to check for metastases.
“We’re kind of in luck.” This was Ouyang Kan’s subconscious reaction, and he did not bother to hide it.
One of the reasons doctors from the General Surgery Department did not like to perform radical gastrectomy for stomach cancer using a laparoscope was because of limitations when it came to the parts of the abdominal cavity that could be operated on. Radical gastrectomy for stomach cancer using a laparoscope was basically only possible for patients who were at the early stages of stomach cancer. Even though there were research papers that delved into using this surgical method for patients who were at the advanced stages of stomach cancer, many things were still up in the air. In short, this surgical method was only suitable for those who were in the early stages of stomach cancer.
Aside from this, stomach cancer was rarely detected at its early stages. And even if a patient was diagnosed with early-stage stomach cancer, after laparoscopy began and a pneumoperitoneum was produced, metastases might be discovered. In that case, what should a surgeon do?
The surgeon would have to halt the laparoscopy and carry out open surgery instead. Since a pneumoperitoneum had been produced and an incision to insert the laparoscope had been made, there was a higher chance that more metastases would appear. These maneuvers were risk factors for metastases to begin with.
Ouyang Kan said that they were in luck because the patient was still in the early stages of stomach cancer. However, this was still a beginning. Ordinarily, this surgery took five to six hours, and there were plenty of obstacles that they would have to weather.
Ouyang Kan shifted his gaze from the screen to Ling Ran’s face. Ling Ran was wearing an earnest expression, and Ouyang Kan felt secondhand embarrassment for him. ‘Only a young person can do this. A person of my age would never take such a huge risk and carry out such a dangerous surgery in front of so many people.’
Heated discussions were also going on in the visitation room above the operating theater.
The department director of the General Surgery Department could not help but say to Huo Congjun as he chuckled, “Young people are really impulsive. Why didn’t you help him out and ask him to tone things down a little?”
“Why would I do that? As emergency physicians, we never expect anything to go as we want them to. If this world were perfect, there wouldn’t be a need for the Emergency Department,” Huo Congjun said philosophically with his hands crossed in front of his chest.
It only took one look for the department director of the General Surgery Department to know what he was thinking about. “Are you this confident in Ling Ran?”
“With his skills, of course, I’m super confident in him.” Huo Congjun laughed.
The director of the General Surgery Department was not convinced. “This is just the beginning. Even if we were to disregard other things, how long do you reckon that he will take to examine the patient’s taenia coli before he can be certain that there are no metastases in there? And what’s the probability that he won’t even be able to detect the presence of metastases?”
“The patient’s taenia coli looks thick and fair. It seems pretty healthy.” Huo Congjun smiled.
“This doesn’t mean that there’s no metastases.”
“If a pig were to have such a taenia coli, it would probably be quite tasty.”
“Of course. Pork intestines are delicious, to begin with. As long as it is washed thoroughly, the taenia coli is one of the most delicious body parts of a pig.”
“There’s no point in washing it too thoroughly.”
“Forget about it. I don’t want to be the one lying on the operating table.”
