CT surgery as a speciality

**Dr Noodle** · 21-10-2007, 06:41 AM

Okay I'm not even in med school yet so this may seem a little premature but I'm just curious...
The only experience I've had in surgery was watching CT surgery. The technique itself is absolutely fascinating but it seems a little routine and possibly, do I dare say it, boring? That's my question-is it actually boring to do as a speciality?

**gimperial99** · 21-10-2007, 10:58 AM

It depends what you like. CT is finished because people do angioplasties now rather than bypass in most cases, although there is a suggestion that for triple vessel disease bypass may be better.

Surgery can look very boring when you are watching it, performing it is quite another experience.

**Dr Noodle** · 21-10-2007, 08:44 PM

Is that just in the UK? Cos where I work there are between two and five cabgs done every day five days a week and that's after they have had angioplasties done. I mean I thought that angioplasties are ineffective if the blockage is too far down the heart and the cardiologist can't reach it with the stent?

And this wasn't boring to watch far from it I was shaking with excitement literally it was the best day ever! But it does seem very routine. I was on one of the hospitals websites and it doesn't look like there are many different cardiac surgery procedures?

**gimperial99** · 21-10-2007, 10:07 PM

Compared to 15 years ago there are certainly less CABGs being done. Im in ortho, so cannot claim to be an expert! But the problem in the UK is that they trained lots of CT surgeons planning for them to be doing CABGs on everyone, then angioplasty came along, and they were not needed. So there was a huge surplus, hence they train VERY few here.

As for watching, it will always be more boring than doing! But it all depends what you like. Some people get excited at doing a DHS, some people fall asleep. The only way is to go out there and get as much experience as possible.

There are a fair few CT procedures, but I imagine its become quite subspecialised. So as an individual surgeon you probably wouldn't be doing to many of them.

**Dr Noodle** · 21-10-2007, 10:22 PM

Ooh whats ortho like?I haven't watched it though I went with the perfusionist when he was setting up the blood filtering thingy and it was very sterile and they had a special sterile square in the centre of the theatre where the air is even sterilised!

**HopefulMedic111** · 08-06-2008, 02:10 AM

I'm not sure how old this thread is but just thought i'd say i watched some CT surgery on my work experience and found it pretty fascinating. I've never seen anything like it before tho so couldn't belive my luck, so didnt really consider how interesting it would be as a job. Seems to me bypasses are the standard thing we'd be doing as CT surgeons but i was also in critical care unit for after CT surgery so to see the variation between recoveries was quite amazing. Surely even just in such a specific speciality (aka bypasses) the variation you must come across would still be wide.

Its also a type of surgery very much against the clock. If ur operating on the aorta then you've got minutes to do ur stuff cuz bypass machines cant do their thing!