Surgical Word of the Day
Laparoscopy: This basically means basically to view what’s inside your chest and abdomen with a camera. A small incision is made and we use a device called a trocar, which is a small tube, to insert the camera into the abdomen and voila, literally, we can see your guts and stuff. Major surgeries that had once required large painful incisions, pretty much up and down your whole trunk, can be performed laparoscopically with a couple of incisions no bigger than a button.
Performing laparoscopic surgery takes some getting used to because you are looking up on a TV screen while moving long instruments with your hands that make all the action happen inside the abdomen. Controlling the instruments takes a basic grasp of geometry and having sweet video gaming skills doesn’t hurt. This is one reason I curse myself for not playing more “Donkey Kong” when I was younger. As the scrub, my job is usually controlling the camera. The surgeon can get irritated rather quickly if he has to do his work through a shaky picture, or the picture is only viewing a portion of his work area. So the whole team needs to be up to par on the whole hand-eye , video game type, coordination thing. And to think my mom said that video games were worthless.
A Nurse With Attitude 