Surgery Godfather
Chapter 697 - 622: Patients with Metal Allergy

Chapter 697: Chapter 622: Patients with Metal Allergy

Before the morning handover, August appeared in the doctor’s office, having finished his leave and rejoined the team.

For August, the air in China was so sweet and fresh, possessing a strange sort of luxury.

The people here were intelligent and spoke so pleasingly.

The food outside offered a variety of choices, and with three months of residency, he could have a different meal every day.

August’s return ended Robert’s loneliness. At least there was someone to talk to in the dorm, which was better than always watching TV alone.

Although this guy always liked to place a spine model on the coffee table and mumbled to himself, sometimes obstructing Robert’s view of the TV, it was better than watching TV alone while eating spicy sticks.

August divided the vacation gifts he brought into two portions, one to be sent to the nurse’s station, and the other to be placed in the doctor’s office.

The gift pack contained a lot of German snacks, such as chocolates, gummy bears, and various biscuits. In reality though, when it comes to food, no other country is as rich as China. A single province can have plentiful specialties. Germany is famous for a few things like dark beer, but it’s not possible to bring a few crates of dark beer on a plane, so he could only bring some candies and biscuits.

Besides candies and biscuits, there were also some small gifts.

This guy had some sense; he brought a few bottles of daisy hand cream for the head nurse and the nurses. Old man but he was considerate in such a warm way. Nurses often wash their hands, especially in winter, it can easily cause the skin to dry. Hand cream is a necessity.

For the doctors in the department, the old man was also very generous, gifting everyone a Montblanc pen. It was estimated that when he disembarked the plane and went through customs, they probably thought he was carrying goods for an online store.

They were actually accustomed to using simple gel pens, and not used to fountain pens. But for the sake of pretentiousness, they all silently clipped the fountain pen onto the pocket of their white gowns, and some even clipped it into the pocket of their surgical clothing.

Having some pretentiousness sometimes, was necessary.

"Could ordinary people recognize this brand? This one has a six-pointed star."

Zhang Lin, after clipping the pen, puffed out his chest, feeling as if he had ascended several levels.

Little Five’s words were a bit demoralizing: "Ordinary people won’t pay attention to your pen, even if they do, they can’t recognize the brand."

Doctors and nurses were busy all day and no one would care about the brand of pen you use.

To verify Little Five’s words, Zhang Lin grabbed his pen and ran to the nurse’s station.

"Do you recognize this pen?"

Zhang Lin grabbed a nurse and asked, but not a single one recognized it, which made Zhang Lin very disappointed. So he thought of a plan, found a small infusion sticker, wrote "Montblanc" on it, and then wrapped it around the end of the pen cap and reattached it to the pocket on his chest.

"Can you see this word?" Zhang Lin puffed out his chest and asked Little Five.

Little Five looked left and right: "Yes!"

"Is it clear?"

"Clear!"

Zhang Lin was finally satisfied.

"Does pediatrics have a request for our consultation today?"

"Yes, one with Amniotic Band Syndrome."

"Let me handle this consultation."

Zhang Lin went to the whiteboard to find the consultation order, picked out the pediatric order, then glanced at the pen on his chest - Montblanc, really invigorating.

In the stack of orders, one consultation order named Yang Ping, Zhang Lin holding the consultation order: "Is this for the professor?"

"The professor knows, he’ll go over after finishing the surgery this afternoon." Song Zimo took over the consultation order.

When Yang Ping came in, everyone was eating August’s snacks, especially Fatty Liang, who was eating gummy bears. Instead of eating them one by one like everyone else, he ripped open the bag and poured the whole bag into his mouth, which made Yang Ping feel nauseated.

Seeing all the doctors had changed to the same pen, Yang Ping noticed the detail and found it amusing.

Song Zimo stepped forward, clipped a pen onto Yang Ping’s pocket: "From today, we will all be uniform. Yours is a limited edition."

"I don’t use a fountain pen!"

Yang Ping didn’t know this was a gift from August.

Song Zimo clipped the pen and straightened out Yang Ping’s white gown: "You don’t have to use it, just hang it. It’s a department symbol."

---

The surgeries for the day were scheduled pretty close together; after finishing surgery in the afternoon, Yang Ping went for consultation.

Song Zimo, Xu Zhiliang, Dr. Luo and Dr. Ao all followed Yang Ping. During working hours, these guys shadowed Yang Ping like phantoms.

According to the consultation form, the patient is a man in his seventies with severe bone arthritis in both knees. The proposed treatment plan from the orthopedics department was a bilateral artificial knee joint replacement. However, the elderly gentleman is allergic to many types of metal. To be cautious, the orthopedics department tested for allergies to titanium, chromium, cobalt, nickel, and molybdenum. The patient was allergic to all of them, so a joint replacement was ruled out.

But his sons and daughters, who were very filial, wanted the doctor to find a solution. They desired for their father to be able to go out and see the world in his golden years. Director Chang from the orthopedics department sent a junior doctor to ask for Dr. Yang Ping from the Comprehensive Surgery Department.

When Yang arrived, Director Chang also came down to the surgery room, still within the department.

"Dr. Yang is personally consulting?"

Director Chang shook hands.

The obvious answer was, if the consultation form requested him personally to consult, wouldn’t he do it personally?

"Of course! Let’s look at the X-rays first." Yang said, smiling.

Surgeons tend to be straightforward and don’t waste time. Director Chang had Dr. Yang take a seat, and the doctor responsible for the patient’s care immediately came over to adjust the X-ray images.

The television screen used for professional image reading was a vertical rectangular screen. The patient’s X-ray appeared on the screen, very clear. Both knee joints were inwardly malformed with significant narrowing of the medial joint space, increased intercondylar spurs, and evident bone growth around the joint. These were typical signs of bilateral knee osteoarthritis.

Knee osteoarthritis is a knee disease characterized by degeneration of the knee cartilage and secondary bone growth.

The main symptom is knee pain, which worsens when standing and walking but can be somewhat relieved by rest.

Knee osteoarthritis comes in two forms: secondary and primary.

The secondary type usually has a clear cause, such as a fracture within the joint. After the fracture heals abnormally, it leads to an uneven joint surface, resulting in premature wear and degeneration of the cartilage.

As for the primary type, it is common in the elderly. It can be understood as such: with the increase in age, knee cartilage becomes like car tires—it wears out. Once the cartilage wears out, it causes a series of symptoms.

With this kind of disease, knee pain is usually caused by cartilage degeneration, while bone growth rarely causes pain unless the increased bone growth causes a collision during joint movement.

Some television advertisements often use bone growth as a scare tactic, promoting all kinds of medications for treating bone growth.

For older people, regardless of who they are, if they go and have an X-ray taken, bone growth will be found in the lumbar spine and knee joints. This means that all elderly people become targets of these scare tactics.

Nowadays, when elderly people seek medical treatment, they are aware of their own condition: "Doctor, I have bone growth, so my back hurts, and so do my knee joints, so please prescribe some medication for reducing bone growth."

Their stubborn belief in bone growth is completely due to the brainwashing propaganda of media doctors.

In actuality, most cases of bone growth do not require treatment. It is a manifestation of degeneration. For instance, most instances of knee pain aren’t caused by bone growth, but by cartilage degeneration.

If bone growth really does cause pressure on lumbar nerves or knee joint collisions, a few pills won’t resolve the issue; surgical intervention would be required at this point.

The doctors who advertise medical products on TV contribute so much to medicine, that it leaves doctors everywhere else in the world embarrassed.

If you pay a bit of attention, you’ll see that many of the world’s medical challenges have already been conquered by these people. However, they hide among the masses and scoff at worldly things like the Nobel Prize. If they paid mind to it, surely, all of the world’s Nobel Prizes in Medicine would wind up in their hands.

Of course, while they have no interest in the Nobel Prize, there is something they are interested in—the money in the pockets of the elderly.

Director Han knew that when Dr. Yang arrived, he, himself, was merely a symbolic figure, so he stayed calm.

"The patient is allergic to titanium, chromium, cobalt, nickel, and molybdenum; I’m afraid performing an artificial joint replacement might not be feasible. I was hoping you might have a solution," Director Chang said with a hint of difficulty.

All artificial knees currently on the market definitely contain these metals, and even custom-made artificial joints can’t avoid these components.

Generally, the treatment for such a disease is standardised. Director Chang inviting Dr. Yang for consultation is merely to satisfy the family’s wish without expecting any new treatment methods.

"Do his ankles hurt on both sides as well?" Dr. Yang noticed a record in the medical history.

He then adjusted the X-ray images of the ankles on both sides. All showed signs of osteoarthritis, but nothing too severe.

"Was the initial plan to replace the ankle joints too?" Dr. Yang asked.

Director Chang shook his head: "The initial plan was to take a more conservative approach in treating the ankle joints."

At present, the artificial replacement of ankle joints is not mature. Mature replacement techniques are only available for the hip and knee joints.

"Shall we go see the patient?"

They all went together to the ward to see the patient.

The patient was a man in his seventies, slim and frail, with a kind face. That fragility, in an elderly person, gave a healthy impression.

There were several family members present, all his children. As the doctors arrived, they all greeted them politely.

After Dr. Yang went over the medical history and performed a physical examination of the knees, he found that there was a significant rubbing sound when the joints were moved. The pressing pain in the medial condyle area was also evident, indicating the primary source of the pain was the cartilage defect from there. At this severe stage, aside from an artificial joint replacement, there wouldn’t be any other effective methods.

Upon further examination of the muscle and nerve functions, he found that although there was muscle atrophy, it could be restored through exercise. This wasn’t much of an issue. As the sensation in the skin was normal, it suggested there were no issues with the nerves.

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