Surgery Godfather
Chapter 854 - 760 Temporary Suspension of Surgery

Chapter 854: Chapter 760 Temporary Suspension of Surgery

The length of the freed optic nerve was sufficient, and the eyeball connected to the optic nerve was moved aside. The empty orbit thus became the best doorway to safety, directly behind it were the tumor and its "shield." The "shield" was the important brain tissue enveloping the tumor. Here they left a gap, which was the optimal point of attack.

Entering through this gap, one could avoid damaging the surrounding critical brain tissue and likewise avoid harming the dense network of blood vessels.

The surgery required strategy. Faced with a "Maginot Line," was it better to mount a frontal assault or to circumvent it with a surprise flank attack? The latter was clearly the more astute choice.

Despite the great risk of moving aside an eyeball, entering through the orbit sidestepped the dangerous areas. Compared with other approaches, it minimized the risk of death and disability. In a sense, it was the only path to success.

Yang Ping didn’t hesitate, decisively making incisions layer by layer from there, all the way to the cranial cavity. The gap behind it appeared clearly in his field of vision, and through this gap, he could remove the tumor in one fell swoop.

When the video showed the moment the "gap" was exposed.

The doctors at Mayo gasped in admiration at such a clever approach. The gap, right behind the doorway to safety—through the gap one could almost see the blood vessels on the surface of the tumor!

It took tremendous courage and innovation to move aside a healthy eyeball in order to achieve surgical success, something no one had thought of before, nor had the audacity to consider.

"They’re really just behind there?" John Ansen exclaimed.

Yang Ping’s tone remained very calm, "Both MRI and CT have shown this, but you just didn’t notice it."

In fact, every neurosurgeon at Mayo Clinic had reviewed the patient’s MRI and CT images, and they indeed clearly showed the details. However, the power of fixed mindsets is frightening, leading them to selectively overlook the orbit as an approach. Such an entry point was never mentioned in textbooks, and all their plans and attempts were confined within a set boundary.

From the doorway to safety to the tumor, the distance was quite far, and the operation space was unlike the usual—it was almost a tunnel.

Therefore, to resect the tumor through this tunnel, the length of the surgical instruments used had to be much longer than ordinary tools. The longer the distance below the grip point of the instrument in the hand, the less stable the tip of the instrument became.

This posed a certain difficulty for operations under the microscope, especially those involving both arms being held aloft.

Even if one switched to a stable mode with both elbows supported, the difficulty was extremely high under these conditions.

"Do you need support for your elbows?" John Ansen asked.

By now, the first assistant surgeon had been replaced by John Ansen, who himself was an ophthalmologist. He was concerned that the difficulty of the operation couldn’t be met with arms held aloft.

"No need! Support would detract from the flexibility of my hands," replied Yang Ping.

His tone was always so calm, and although it seemed icy, it conveyed his rationality and confidence.

John Ansen stopped speaking because his every judgment was based on a line of thinking entirely different from Yang Ping’s.

The long-handle microscopic instruments had already reached deep into the skull, and the dissection of the tumor began at the gap using a laser knife.

This contact laser knife not only offered high precision but also, unlike conventional mechanical knives, didn’t cause mechanical compression and traction injuries to the nervous tissue during cutting. It also didn’t create electrical interference with intraoperative electrophysiological monitoring like the high-frequency current from electrocoagulation hemostasis equipment.

Therefore, Yang Ping, as the Chief Surgeon in neurosurgery, was very fond of using this tool.

With the location being so deep, the tumor’s blood supply exceptionally plentiful, and the operational space within the tunnel limited, the surgery was destined to be fraught with difficulties.

John Ansen’s task as an assistant was only to handle the retractors; Yang Ping accomplished the entire operation on his own. To minimize the ischemic time for the eyeball, Yang Ping didn’t want to waste time. John Ansen would only slow down his pace; Yang Ping’s solo efficiency was the highest.

The contact laser knife could change the temperature of the tissue by adjusting the power density, changing the exposure time, replacing different shaped knife heads, and altering the way the knife head contacted the tissue. This controlled the shape and scope of the cuts, with a cutting precision of 0.1–0.2 mm and no obvious alterations in the surrounding tissue. Yang Ping maximized the advantages of the laser knife while minimizing the disadvantages of thermal damage.

The tiny knife head would appear between blood vessels every time it was operated, severing and coagulating them, which is why up to this point, there had been no bleeding observed in the surgical area.

Yang Ping reached out for the instrument he wanted, but it did not come. He paused and turned to look at the Instrumental Nurse.

The nurse looked perplexed.

"I need another round knife head laser knife!" Yang Ping reminded her. He realized that the Instrumental Nurse was just a unfamiliar American girl and suddenly came to his senses, so he reminded her.

Now, holding a microscopic forceps in his left hand and a sharp knife head laser knife in his right, Yang Ping found that using this same laser knife for both cutting and hemostasis slowed him down.

Therefore, he wanted to switch the microscopic forceps in his left hand to a round knife head laser knife so he could cut with his right hand and coagulate with his left, coordinating the two to separate the tissues and increase speed.

"OK!"

The Instrumental Nurse responded, verbally brisk, but inwardly she was very flustered. Her sluggishness was just the accumulation of the past moments; she had been trying very hard but couldn’t keep up with the pace. In that moment just now, her tense nerves finally snapped, and she couldn’t keep up with the rhythm any longer.

Yet Yang Ping had already been considerate of the nurse’s pace, having performed the earlier part of the surgery quite slowly. Of course, this was slow only relative to his usual speed, while in everyone else’s eyes, he was already moving very fast.