Chapter 194 - Humble Superintendent Ouyang (1/2)
”No need to cry! Your dad can take care of everything. Look at you, even your eyes are swollen. You're not hurt anywhere, are you?” Lu Renjia's father hugged his daughter, feeling bad for her. His daughter had stopped relying on him ever since high school. She was quite the independent type, but today she had been so scared! Lu Renjia's father really felt such pain in his heart from this.
”I just finished going to the bathroom and was washing my hands when a hoodlum tried to molest me. Zhu Bing knocked him down and told me to immediately go back to the private karaoke room. When I came back out again, he was already lying in his own blood! Waaah! Waaah! Waaah!” Lu Renjia was finally able to talk about the sadness in her heart, although she had nobody to talk to about her regret!
Inside the operating room, cardiothoracic Director Liu asked, ”Doctor Zhang, will you be the primary surgeon, or shall I?”
Zhang Fan had a serious expression as he answered, ”Director Liu, please allow me to do this surgery. This person is my friend. I was also present when he was stabbed. I'd feel so bad if I didn't do something for him.”
”Alright, you'll be the primary surgeon, then. I'll be your surgical assistant.” Director Liu nodded in agreement. There was no helping it. He wouldn't have asked any other doctor in the hospital regarding cardiothoracic surgery, but Zhang Fan was different. Zhang Fan was just as skilled as he was in cardiothoracic surgery, and Zhang Fan even had steadier hands because he was younger.
The surgery began. For this type of surgery, the doctor would typically enter the chest through the fifth rib, especially in an emergency. Opening up the chest would be more important than worrying about bleeding. Luckily, Zhu Bing just happened to be a situs inversus totalis, meaning that he had the rare medical condition where his internal organs were completely reversed from a normal person's, transposed from left to right. Normally, the heart would always be on the left—this was just common sense already. Organ reversal was rare already, but Zhu Bing was the rarest type where every single organ in his body was reversed like a mirror, which had odds of less than 0.01%.
Zhu Bing had been the descendant of a police hero. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been even accepted into the police force with his body's condition, as he would have been eliminated already by the physical checkups.
Zhang Fan eliminated the blood clots after opening up the chest and then located the point of bleeding. Although the bleeding didn't come from a major blood vessel, this blood vessel wasn't minor, either. Zhang Fan swiftly pressured with his fingers while telling the anesthesiologist and operating room nurse, ”Increase the rate of fluid infusion. Directly administer dexamethasone.”
He then began to deal with the bleeding. Such a blood vessel could be replaced by one of many other blood vessels. There was no need for connection, nor was there any time for connection, since the intercostal artery and internal thoracic artery were also bleeding. After Zhang Fan sewed up the bleeding vessel in the chest, he asked, ”How are the patient's vitals?”
The anesthesiologist immediately replied, ”His vitals were undetectable just now, but they've just returned. 80/50 mmhg. His vitals will probably improve more with this fluid infusion.”
”Okay!” Zhang Fan didn't waste any words. He immediately began to sew the intercostal artery and internal thoracic artery. The human body was truly so advanced. If a blood vessel was sewn up and ligated, the other blood vessels in the area would take its place in providing blood supply. However, the bleeding still continued even after Zhang Fan finished sewing these blood vessels, because this was a large interpulmonary vessel. Although the bleeding had now reduced significantly, there was still constant bleeding.
Zhang Fan now hesitated because he didn't want to have to surgically remove a lobe from Zhu Bing's lung. Zhu Bing was still so young. He was also a policeman. If this lung lobe could be preserved, then Zhu Bing would be able to recover fully after surgery, with nothing more than a surgical scar to show for it. But if this lung lobe had to be removed, Zhu Bing would likely no longer be able to remain a policeman, since he would be unable to keep up with the physical exertion required!
Cardiothoracic Director Liu who was acting as Zhang Fan's surgical assistant noticed that Zhang Fan had paused during the surgery. ”What's the matter, Doctor Zhang? Is there a problem?”
When Director Liu asked this, the anesthesiologist hurriedly checked the monitors, and said, ”Doctor Zhang, the blood pressure is rising. It's now 100/60 mmhg, and the breathing rate and heartbeat have steadied.”
”No, Director Liu, it's just that I was thinking about whether to remove this lung lobe or not,” Zhang Fan told Director Liu.
”Although you've already performed ligation, you can see that it's still bleeding. It'll be impossible to preserve this lung lobe.”
”But if I remove the lung lobe, this patient will no longer be able to remain a policeman,” Zhang Fan said with pity.
”Doctor Zhang, this patient is incredibly lucky already. Why think about such a matter? Let's remove the lobe!” Director Liu had zero hesitation.
”Alright, let's remove it then!” Zhang Fan said with pity. At this moment, the head nurse of the operating rooms arrived. She glanced at the nurse in the operating room, who nodded to the head nurse. The meaning was obvious. The surgery had been successful and the patient was saved!
The head nurse then stood behind Zhang Fan's back and gently pressed up against him while glancing at the surgery's progress. Her scent of a young woman was quite obvious. Also, everyone in the operating room would need to wear surgical attire, which was quite light!
She then whispered into Zhang Fan's ear, ”How is it, Doctor Zhang? The superintendent and other leaders are waiting outside for the news. They've also already contacted a professor from Dee University. Will there be a need to have the professor fly here? Still, I think that you and Director Liu have no problems, right?”
This was her treatment of a highly skilled doctor. The head nurse had great emotional intelligence. She took advantage of what she had without losing a single thing for it! This type of light seduction wasn't obvious, but would still make people have some thoughts about her. But if you treated her flirtation seriously, then you would be overthinking things. A young woman with high emotional intelligence like her really loved to act ambiguously and try and charm you without ever treating you seriously! Only those middle-aged and older men would understand and be able to control themselves in such situations. An older man would smile in understanding and joke, saying ”Head nurse, you've gotten fatter!” and end things there.
However, Zhang Fan was still young and naïve. He hadn't been nervous about the surgery, but he started sweating profusely just because the head nurse had pressed herself against his back. Zhang Fan didn't even respond for quite a long while to the head nurse's question, so Director Liu answered, ”Doctor Zhang is someone who always endeavors to improve. Still, the patient should be fine now. There's no need to invite a professor from Dee University. What do you say, Doctor Zhang?”
”Yes, there's no need,” Zhang Fan answered in a low voice.
”Haha. I knew that you're an amazing youngster,” the head nurse said while gently patting Zhang Fan on the back before leaving the operating room.
”Doctor Zhang, there's honestly no need to worry about things. This lung lobe absolutely must be removed. The human body has great ability to compensate. As long as the patient doesn't do vigorous exercise in the future, it won't be a major problem.” Director Liu was under the impression that Zhang Fan was still worried about cutting out the lung lobe.
”Okay, let's cut it then!” Zhang Fan said in a bit of an unnatural voice.
He opened up a diagonal incision and adjusted the lung lobe to reveal the inferior lobar pulmonary artery. Because the basilar (dorsal) and lingual arteries typically originated from the left pulmonary trunk at the same level, ligation and cutting off the basilar artery's connection would be necessary to perform first. The other basic arteries would be separated from the inferior lingual artery, followed by ligation and suturing before cutting it off. This would be followed by ligation and cutting off the inferior pulmonary ligament. After that, Zhang Fan needed to push aside the mediastinal pleura, separate the inferior pulmonary vein, ligate, sew, and cut that vein. Then, he would need to separate the lower lobar bronchus, then cut and suture the dorsal bronchus before dealing with the basilar bronchus.
Such a surgery wasn't difficult at all for Zhang Fan. As long as the patient's shock was dealt with, nothing else would be an issue. Thus, he was no longer in a hurry. If a patient was in shock, the doctor would need to act swiftly as there would be no time to afford slow movements. If there was too much bleeding and the doctor didn't act fast enough, the shock would change to having many organs start to fail. Even the gods wouldn't be able to save the patient then.
But once the patient's state of shock improved, then the doctor would need to slow down and be cautious. Laymen might think that those who performed surgery quicker were more skilled doctors, but this wasn't actually the case.
For a simple analogy, maybe a village doctor could finish an appendectomy in just 15 minutes, while a doctor from a Class A hospital would take more than half an hour to finish the same procedure. Who was the more skilled doctor?
The goal of surgery was to treat a problem, not to finish a race. As long as the patient's life wasn't in imminent danger, then being extra, extra, extra cautious would be far more important. Finishing an appendectomy in only 15 minutes would mean that the doctor absolutely hadn't properly separated the tissue layers when entering the body, nor would the doctor have properly sewed things back together. Although 15 minutes would seem to be really quick, it would actually be quite bad for the patient afterwards as the patient's tissue structure would become chaotic. If anything happened in that area of the patient's body again, no doctor would dare to touch it!