My first time in the operation room

Today, I've seen another side of dentistry that I haven't seen before. We have finally started our oral surgery rotation. I was supposed to be in Minor Oral Surgery Dept but since the consultant was away, I was sent to the operation room in Dental Outpatient Dept, Cork University Hospital.

It was quite a tiny room for surgery. At one time only 3 patients max can be there with 2 patients in the recovery room and 1 patient in the actual operation room. There were about 7-8 nurses, 1 oral surgeon, 1 assistant, 1 anesthetist (I think so) and us 3 students.

We were quite late because we had briefing since this is our first day of rotation. Rotation for Mondays only la. Every other day we are doing our normal jobs, at labs or restorative clinic. One of my classmate was there already scrubbed in for the first case. Wisdom teeth removal. Me and my other classmate were given instructions by the nurse on how to scrub in and stuff so I didn't get to see much on the first case.

The second case was a guy, of same age with me (because he has tattoo on his neck : Est 1987) who had mandible fracture. His X-ray looked something like this :

I didn't mean to scare you with my hideous sketching but it was something like that la. Classic presentation of mandible fracture, one at body, one at the angle. He could barely open his mouth and he didn't remember how he got into this. My guess would be he was drunk and got into fight. Wah kau suke-suke tuduh orang kan.

Prof S went on and did plating on those 2 broken parts. To screw in the plate they had to drill the jaw bone. Dahlah ni first time saya tengok benda-benda camni nasib tak pitam. Memang pretty much like you drilling the wall, put in the nail to hang stuff on you wall tu. Kalau macam ni Su'ud (the Indo guy who did my house renovation and who helped Mak with all this plumbing/construction/eletrical stuff) pun boleh jadi surgeon. LOL.

For the 3rd case it was my turn to scrub in finally. This poor lady needed external drainage for his abscess. She came in with the dressing on so we didn't really get the idea how bad it was initially.

When the anesthetist was in the middle of making her unconscious, blood and pus started to drip in from the dressing. He couldn't intubate her so he had to hold the mask on her to make sure she stayed unconscious. When they finally open the dressing, Astaghfirullahalazim, pus and blood came out like nobody's business. Just a little pinch needed to push out the pus and blood. There were 3 sinuses. One of the sinus was initially a big green bulge (about a size of 50cent, maybe bigger) that popped out pus and blood when they poke it. The smell was unreal. All the nurses gathered around the patient in awe. Me? Takyah cerita la I had to calm myself pretend I'm okay padahal kaki dah ringan je nak pengsan. Haha..

Prof S extracted her lower right molar that caused all the problem. It was grossly carious and a simple early precaution by taking it out could have solved it. Can you imagine how a tiny tooth could be that life-threatening?

After a few pack of gauze later, prof S finally put something like a tube into the sinus, stitched it and dressed the wound. He said yes, there would be scars on her face but they are gonna heal up well.

Illustration of the pus and blood.

All in all I'm starting to love this rotation. I'll be here for another 2 Mondays so I hope I'm gonna see more fun stuff. Barulah boleh cakap kat orang dentistry isn't all about main korek gigi orang ok! Heheh..