Thoughts after the Completion of my Internship:
After the summer of 2014 had elapsed, I had the great opportunity
and experience to perform a Dr. Shadowing role in Pediatric Neurosurgery with Dr.
Juan A. Vigo Prieto. As mentioned beforehand, I learned that pediatric
neurosurgery refers to a subfield of neurosurgery (one of the many branches of
medicine) that performs surgery on infants or children afflicted with some kind
of neurological disorder that requires surgery. It is important to recall that
a neurosurgical disorder involves problems associated with the neurological
system (composed of nerves, spinal cord, and brain, essentially). During my internship,
I was informed that a physician, who practices Pediatric Neurosurgery, must
submit himself/herself through an extensive residency and fellowship program
(comprised of 7 or more years of clinical and surgical experience) that specializes
in an intense training to learn how to handle deformities, injuries, and
diseases in infants. The most common deformities, injuries and/or diseases that
I was able to observe in Dr. Vigo’s clinical and hospital setting were brain
tumors (among all its variants), spasticity, movement disorders, intractable
epilepsy, hydrocephalus, craniosynostosis, head injuries, and spina bifida, as
well as other cranial malformations and spinal deformities mentioned and
explained in detail on the “Illustrated Glossary” tab. On the other hand, I also was instructed that
a pediatric neurosurgeon apart from being qualified to surgically address
medical complications involving the nervous system in children, not all the
time in a case/affliction basis, surgery is chosen as the best course of action
to correct and/or palliate a neurological disorder.
Finally, through the completion of this internship, I was able to acknowledge the role and importance of Pediatric Neurosurgery in the children’s proper functioning of their nervous system since the latter is responsible for coordinating all of the body's activities. Also, through this clinical and surgical experience in Pediatric Neurosurgery allowed me to acquire knowledge of the broad health scope of this medical branch in terms of learning and familiarizing with the profiles of the most common neurological diseases ( for example craneosynostosis, hydrocephalus, spina bifida, brain tumors among others) and the most effective treatments and surgeries to cure or alleviate the patients who suffer from them (medulloblastomas, olidedrogliomas, meningiomas, astrocytomas, brain aneurysm, etcetera). In addition, I became proficient in the usage of common neurosurgical terms to describe patient’s current illness ( like midline shifting, scaphocephaly, myelopathy, ventriculomegaly, radiculopathy, brain herniation and edema), in determining the different methods or tests to identify neurological illnesses (CT, MRI and MRA) and the medical instruments used to perform the surgeries (as many as operating microscope, dissecting and mosquitoes forceps, craneotome, cautery, cottonoid, scalpel, nerve hook retractor, sutures and so forth). As well, I started to acquire mastery in the discussion of retrospective-prospective plans in order to manage patient’s health state before and after the neurological-surgical procedure.