Week 5 - McCoy

This week I had more down time to begin working on my project, which is more so of a literature search and review on the uses of ultrasound in chemotherapy delivery, particularly in seeing whether or not disruption of the blood-brain barrier would be possible or appropriate. Current limitations to using chemotherapies for brain cancers are their inability to pass through the blood-brain barrier and reach their therapeutic target. Additionally, I also followed a med student in Boockvar’s lab, Kartik Kesavabhotla, and saw how many of the med students practice for their eventual surgeries – on animals. It was actually a bit more interesting as I was able to be closer to the actual surgery and I could ask a lot more questions than I would normally be allowed to within a human surgery.

I spent some time again in clinicals with Dr. Boockvar, though much of the time was spent going through patient history, previous treatments, and other data that would be useful in his understanding of their cases. From this, I was able to pick up on key things that he uses in identifying different cases and his course of action for each of those. In particular, he seemed to be fairly accurate at diagnosing brain tumor types from their location and MRI appearance, something that he said he’s picked up on over his years of experience with them. He also told me about many of the basic therapies that are used for many of the gliomas, though due to their unique location and proximity to vital tissues, the list of possible therapies was very small. Additionally, he told me about many of the different nuances of surgery and thing he has to consider when he decides whether or not he wants to continue with surgery on a particular patient.