Week 2 - Sung Ji

This week I went to several lab meetings. At Dr. Iadecola’s department meeting, faculties and students presented their recent data on physiology of stroke and dementia. I was able to see what scientific researches are like in the medical school. After the meeting, I went to the labs and saw their field-, patch clamp-recording facilities and mouse behavior test equipment. Another lab meeting with my mentor Dr. Pannullo and her doctorate student (Joe Miller), we discussed about my summer project. I also went to brain tumor board, and saw various clinical cases. At the grand round in the Monday morning, a mathematical PhD from Ithaca campus came and presented how bioinformatics are used to screen genome profile and anticipate the occurrence of tumors.

Most of the time I spent my time shadowing Dr. Panullo’s patient in the clinic. Brain tumor patients usually have multiple doctors for their evaluation. Doctors specializing in neuro-oncology, seizer, various types of neurosurgeries share patients with each other and an intensive discussion is made before the onset of treatment. A large portion of brain tumors originate from primary lung and breast tumors. Symptoms of brain tumor are headache, seizer and often symptoms of stroke such as one-side facial numbness, weakness, and trouble speaking. Depending on the size and location of the tumor, patients are directed to different subtypes of neurosurgeons. Although the cause and subtype of brain tumor greatly varies among patient, and some patient came in for an aneurism, most of Dr. Panullo’s patients are either planning on getting radiotherapy or monitoring progress after therapy. Sometimes patients with giant tumor mass in the critical brain region get high accuracy radiotherapy after rough invasive surgery.

In this week, I went to Columbia hospital and shadowed a gamma knife surgery (non-invasive brain surgery) with Dr. Pannullo. The patient had four small brain tumors in his brain that derived from the primary tumor in the lung. A head frame was screwed on the patient’s head. The area of irradiation was determined on a high resolution CT image taken with the head frame. The procedure of surgery was very simple. The patient lay inside a gamma knife machine with his head secured in the machine by the head frame. The procedure was about an hour long, and the patient was discharged right after the treatment. Just like a huge sensation development of two-photon microscopy brought in the area of medical research, which enabled functional in vivo imaging of a live animal, non-invasive surgeries possess an enormous possibility in clinical medicine. Although there still needs lots of amendments such as, troublesome head-frame, amount of radiation, accuracy, and restricted tumor specimens, developing an equipment in this area seems very promising.