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  • [Day in the life of a heart surgeon, Paul Massimiano, MD - cardiac surgeon]

  • Okay, 6:00 a.m., right on time.

  • It's the story of my professional life, getting to the hospital in the dark and going home in the dark.

  • We have surgery this morning.

  • We operate most mornings.

  • We're doing open heart surgery on a patient this morning, a minimally invasive mitral valve repair through a little incision in the side.

  • Ready to go.

  • Patients are nervous before open heart surgery.

  • It's pretty understandable.

  • But I always tell them the important thing is I'm not nervous.

  • Hey, good morning.

  • Good morning.

  • So you--you showed up, huh?

  • That's half the battle.

  • Just showing up is half the battle.

  • Yeah.

  • You all set for today?

  • So it's just like we talked about in the office.

  • We're going to work on fixing your mitral valve.

  • Going through the side?

  • We're going to do a little two inch incision in the side.

  • Yeah, everything is favorable for that, yeah.

  • So just like we talked about.

  • So anything go on last night I need to know about?

  • No major issues, no.

  • Yeah, okay.

  • Well let's go down to the ICU, and we can review the patients that are there.

  • Okay, good morning, everybody.

  • What's the plan?

  • The plan is if we can get the tubes out today and maybe keep the wires another day, and send him upstairs.

  • Can he go upstairs today?

  • Yes.

  • Okay, very good.

  • Any issues we need to take care of before I go to the operating room?

  • No, sir.

  • Nope.

  • Okay.

  • All righty.

  • All right, have a good day.

  • And I'll catch up with you on the floor after surgery.

  • All right, thank you.

  • The operation is like a well choreographed ballet.

  • Everyone knows their role.

  • The technicians, and the scrub techs, and the perfusionists who run the heart lung machine, all these people are very sophisticated.

  • They all know exactly what to do.

  • So the environment is very controlled.

  • It's very pleasant.

  • We actually listen to music.

  • Now the kind of music that we listen to is always a question.

  • If it were up to me, I'd listen to classical music.

  • But I've got a lot of 20 somethings and 30 somethings in there that if they listen to classical music, they get bored.

  • So in order to keep them happy, I listen to rap or hip hop and a lot of pop music.

  • If you do something 1,000 times or 10,000 times, you get the sequence into your mind.

  • And then the only thing you have to do is be ready for unexpected circumstances, which in a case like this, would be very, very unusual.

  • Okay, so I've got these special magnifying lenses on called loops.

  • And it allows me to see inside a magnified 3.5 times, so everything looks very big and very close.

  • And it helps us to evaluate valves and coronary arteries.

  • Okay, well we're all finished.

  • Surgery's over, everything went fine.

  • We were able to fix the patient's valve through a little two inch incision.

  • He was stable through the whole time, and I'm completely satisfied.

  • So now let's go give the family the good news.

  • Okay, everything went great.

  • Yeah, we're all done.

  • The operation was nice and smooth.

  • Everything went fine, okay?

  • The nurses will give you a full briefing on what to expect once you see him in the ICU.

  • Wonderful.

  • Okay?

  • I appreciate that.

  • All righty.

  • Thank you so much, Doctor.

  • And we'll talk later.

  • All righty.

  • Okay, well the first case is over, and had a successful completion.

  • So I'm pretty satisfied.

  • One thing about cardiac surgery is that every day is a new day.

  • It's exciting.

  • I've never been bored a single day in my entire career.

  • So all in all, it's a pleasure and it's an honor to operate on patients and be entrusted with their care.

[Day in the life of a heart surgeon, Paul Massimiano, MD - cardiac surgeon]

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