Walk Into The Surgeon’s "Secret Practice Room"

The needle used for surgical suture is 3 mm long and only 1/5 of the thickness of the hair strand, while the blood vessel of the small finger of the child to be sutured is only 0.3 mm in diameter, and the operation will take more than ten hours at every turn...The hand surgeon must have proficient skills, More must have the perseverance of a marathon runner. How exactly is this kind of kung fu practiced? Let's go to the hospital animal laboratory to find out.

Sutures Are Invisible to The Naked Eye

When you enter the "Secret Practice Room"-the animal laboratory, two newly recruited doctors are training in surgical small vessel anastomosis in front of the microscope. They sutured blood vessels thinner than hair on the tails of living mice with needles that are almost invisible to the naked eye.

An anesthetized mouse is fixed on the doctor's desk. The doctor put his eyes tightly on the microscope, while his hands were flipping over the rat's peeled tail. "Hey, how do they suture blood vessels without anything in their hands?" When you came to the microscope, it suddenly became clear that the needles in the doctor's hands were barely visible with the naked eye. The needles used for sutures are only 3 mm long, and the thread used for stitching is even thinner. You can find the traces of the needle and thread through a microscope. You can see that the doctor clamp the needle with a needle holder in one hand, then sew up and tie the knot in one go, while holding the electrocoagulation hemostat in the other hand, he could coagulate the leaking spot to stop the bleeding at any time.

One of the founders of the hospital’s surgery introduced: “The diameter of the blood vessels in the tail of a white mouse is only 1 mm, which is similar to the thickness of the arteries in the middle section of an adult’s finger. Such hard training can ensure that the young doctors of hand surgery have a solid foundation.”

After 5,000 Stitches, Surgeons Can Leave The "Secret Practice Room"

Vascular anastomosis is the most important part of surgical procedures such as replantation of severed fingers. In the process of suturing, it will embolize and leak blood if you are not careful. In the medical school, every newly recruited doctor has to go through the "devil training" in the "The needle used for surgical suture is 3 mm long and only 1/5 of the thickness of the hair strand, while the blood vessel of the small finger of the child to be sutured is only 0.3 mm in diameter, and the operation will take more than ten hours at every turn..." before he can undergo surgery. Every new doctor needs to do an anastomosis of the small blood vessels of the tails of 10 white mice, and the pass rate is more than 95% to be considered qualified. Coupled with basic surgical training, a doctor who can perform surgical operations basically has to go through nearly two years of "devil" train".

Let's make a rough calculation. Each mouse needs 50-60 small blood vessel sutures on the 10 cm long tail, and each suture requires 8 stitches around the small blood vessel wall. In other words, there are more than 400 stitches on the tail of a white mouse. If you are not proficient in suturing, you will have to sew up to more than 500 stitches. 10 white mice come down, that's nearly 5000 stitches! These exercises are carried out outside of work. In order to “exit” from the “practice secret room” as soon as possible, young doctors rush to the laboratory to “occupy the ground” at dawn every day. In the beginning, many doctors can sew up in 10 minutes. An anastomosis takes more than 20 hours to complete the vascular anastomosis of a white rat's tail, and it often takes practice until the middle of the night. Do you admire the perseverance and dedication of these doctors?

Medarchitect provides suture practice pads, silicone suture training vessels, intestinal suture products for customers, we will continue to develop new suture training products for the surgeon's market.