Surgery Godfather
Chapter 1209 - 940: Concern from All Over the World

Chapter 1209: Chapter 940: Concern from All Over the World

Xia Shu’s father’s surgery was completed. The surgery was performed personally by Yang Ping as the chief surgeon, involving a mostly stomach resection and regional lymph node dissection by laparoscope. The entire surgery had almost no bleeding, so the postoperative recovery was expected to be very fast.

Surgery itself can cause trauma and disrupt a person’s internal environment. The advantage of minimally invasive surgery is that it causes less trauma to the human body and less disruption to the internal environment, leading to faster recovery after the operation.

Although early-stage stomach cancer may just be a tiny "ulcer," cancer cells inevitably spread to surrounding areas or lymph nodes. To eliminate these small, yet unorganized "evil seeds," the surgery involved not only removing the tiny "ulcer" but also resecting a large part of the stomach including the ulcer and the surrounding lymph nodes.

To be cautious, during the operation, Yang Ping had the resected lymph nodes sent to the Pathology Department for frozen tissue section analysis, with Wen Ruzheng looking for cancer cells. Fortunately, no cancer cells were found in the surrounding lymph nodes.

During Xia Shu’s father’s surgery, the head nurse made time to stay with Xia Shu’s mother in the family waiting area, chatting with the elderly lady to relieve her worries.

After completing Xia Shu’s father’s surgery, Yang Ping still had many more surgeries to perform, the subsequent patients all required brainstem tumor surgeries.

Many of these patients were referred by neurosurgery experts from Beijing and Shanghai, as well as many from abroad. Brainstem surgery is truly the pinnacle of neurosurgery, with few hospitals capable of performing such surgeries, and even fewer able to offer various types of surgeries due to the nature of the surgery, as many brainstem tumors are inoperable with current surgical technology.

The thumb-sized brainstem is the life center of the body, controlling critical functions such as heartbeat, breathing, and movement. If the brain is the CPU, then the brainstem is the core area of the CPU.

The medulla oblongata of the brainstem is an area highly concentrated with nerve cells, containing the fundamental life centers for heartbeat, breathing, and digestion.

The anatomy of the medulla oblongata is complex and deep-seated. If removing a tumor from the medulla, the surgical approach involves passing through the skull, then avoiding the basal arteries, venous sinuses, cranial nerves, and entering the brainstem through safe gaps within neural cell clusters without damaging the nerve cells, making the surgery extremely difficult.

Any slight mistake during surgery could lead to abnormal heartbeat and breathing, resulting in intraoperative cardiopulmonary arrest or postoperative inability to breathe independently, prolonged coma, or a vegetative state.

If the tumor is located inside the nerve nucleus of the medulla oblongata, the surgical risks are even higher, and almost no doctors dare to perform the surgery. Opening the nerve nucleus would definitely damage nerve cells, plus some tumors grow invasively without clear boundaries, making these medulla oblongata tumors untouchable.

If the brainstem was once a surgical no-go zone, then the medulla oblongata is the strictest no-go area within that. In recent years, with deeper anatomical studies of the brainstem, advances in microsurgery, and the development of neuroelectrophysiological techniques and neuro-navigational technologies, surgery on the medulla oblongata has become possible, but only possibly for a subset of medulla oblongata tumors.

Yang Ping has also been researching brainstem surgeries, accumulating a lot of research on brainstem anatomy, function, surgical approaches, and methods. He plans to publish some papers or compile a specialized book, but currently, he feels that the amount of cases he has accumulated is still insufficient, and his research is not yet mature, so he has held off on publishing.

However, since Yang Ping performed the surgery on Professor Feng Tiancheng, many insiders know Yang Ping is skilled in brainstem surgery. Whenever they encounter a dire case, many experts would suggest to patients: "You should visit the Sanbo Surgical Research Institute to see if they have better methods. They are researching this."

Under Yang Ping’s guidance, Song Zimo and Xu Zhiliang have also begun to independently perform brainstem surgeries. Some ultra-high-difficulty surgeries are still only manageable by Yang Ping, such as diffuse gliomas in the medulla oblongata involving nerve nucleus. Song Zimo and Xu Zhiliang are not yet able to be the chief surgeons for these, but even so, Song Zimo and Xu Zhiliang are among the world’s top brainstem surgeons.

Yang Ping continued as the chief surgeon for several other patients, while Xia Shu and other doctors brought his father back to the ward; his father was under general anesthesia and had already woken up.

After bringing him to the ward and after the other doctors left, Xia Shu and his mother stayed by his father’s bedside. The head nurse, worried Xia Shu might forget to stay calm, relayed some instructions and then comforted the elderly lady before going about her own duties.

"Ah Shu, who is this girl? I think she’s quite wonderful, pretty, tall, gentle, and sensible. It would be great if she could be my daughter-in-law." Xia Shu’s mother was particularly pleased with the head nurse. Her son was thirty and still without a wife, and getting a wife like her would be a blessing earned over many lifetimes.

Xia Shu blushed and said, "Don’t talk nonsense, she’s our head nurse."

"Who says a head nurse can’t become a wife? Is this girl married?" Xia Shu’s mother was also a capable elderly woman.

Xia Shu was amazed by his mother, shamelessly keen on securing a beautiful woman as his daughter-in-law whenever he saw one.

"Keep your voice down, it’s embarrassing to let others hear this." Xia Shu immediately cautioned his mother.

Xia Shu’s mother said, "You’re just too timid. Fortune favors the bold; hunger strikes the meek. It’s clear this girl isn’t married, and she is nice and beautiful, and you work together. Why don’t you be a little braver?"