Surgery Godfather

Chapter 374: Chapter 0354 Topic

Yang Ping was quite worried about the surgery for little Andrew.

Even though he had already drawn detailed surgical blueprints, he was afraid Robert would still not be able to perform the surgery with satisfactory results.

Given Robert’s rigorous approach as a doctor, he would certainly not rush to perform this procedure. He would either ask Yang Ping to perform it or wait a few years to do it himself once he had thoroughly mastered the operation.

Robert would likely choose the former, as he is a doctor—an outstanding one. He would consider the problem from the patient’s perspective, not his own interests.

Currently, the difficult cases in Yang Ping’s hands include, apart from little Andrew, a patient with kneecap osteomalacia referred by Boss Cheng. After Yunjian botched the surgery, the patient planned to have it redone in Liquan Hospital.

Wei Danian, who ends up in the ICU once a year, does not have a definitive diagnosis. What might be the cause of his lactic acid poisoning?

The WeChat group specially created for discussing Wei Danian’s condition has been quiet recently—it seemed that no genetic test results had been released by Dr. Wen of Nandu Medical University.

The most challenging case that demanded Yang Ping’s full attention was Sisi. Sisi’s femur had been extended by more than ten centimeters. Once the target was reached and the two ends connected, the next step of the surgery would involve reconstructing her thigh muscles.

During the multiple surgeries to remove the primary tumor, not only was the entire segment of the femur removed, but the surrounding muscle was excised to the point where almost nothing was left. If the muscle is to be rebuilt, muscle flaps must be harvested from other areas for transplantation.

The thigh muscles, both quadriceps and hamstrings, are the strongest muscles in the human body and it’s impossible to find suitable donor sites.

This was a challenging problem. However, all these issues could be handled slowly. On Sisi’s last review, it was found that the tumor treated with Gamma Knife had not recurred for now.

But recurrence was only a matter of time. It is nearly impossible to fully eradicate the spreading tumor cells through surgical means alone.

What if it recurs?

Continuing using Gamma Knife is like fighting fire; it only deals with the symptoms, not the source, and one is always on the run.

However, for osteosarcoma, there are no magic bullet targeted drugs in the world. Apart from surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, there are no good methods. Relatively speaking, the focused ultrasound wave of the Gamma Knife is currently the best method.

In regards to Sisi, Yang Ping had to plan further into the future. Deep down, he had already resolved to give his all, regardless of the outcome.

Hence, the laboratory rewarded by the system space was urgently needed for Yang Ping. He needed a lab to conduct research, just like the mass surgical training. With this lab, he could initiate research projects and use unlimited time to carry out studies.

It should be time for Song Zimo’s surgery. Yang Ping rose from the bench to go check in the operating room.

The first surgery posed no pressure for Song Zimo as he strictly followed the standard procedure.

The steps of the standard procedure corresponded to each score point; the two were not in contradiction.

Then, Director Han and Professor Zhang also came in, discussing something.

Song Zimo’s surgery was flawless. Each step was accurate, thorough, meticulous but not stiff, without any trace of rules just for the sake of the competition.

The judges who were watching the live and scoring, marked full scores for each step—full scores, full scores, full scores—

Director Han and Professor Zhang seemed very relaxed. Seeing Yang Ping, Director Han beckoned, “Xiao Yang, we got the license for stem cell research in the Orthopedic Research Institute. If you have any research projects, you can propose one.”

Currently, Yang Ping did want to propose research proposals, and he wished to focus on tissue repair, such as the repair of muscle tissue defects, which is the next problem to be resolved for Sisi.

For larger projects, he would wait until he was awarded the system space lab.

“I want to set a project in tissue engineering, which requires the use of stem cells and 3D printing. I don’t know if our 3D printer can perform nano-level micro-view printing?” Yang Ping didn’t have a good understanding of the performance of this 3D printer.

“It can do macro-view printing, but not micro-view printing, and nano-level printing is even more impossible. This equipment originally had nano-level micro-view printing, but when we imported it, they refused to sell this restricted technology, so it lacks the corresponding hardware and software modules,” explained Director Han, who was more familiar with the equipment since he participated in the negotiation to procure it.

It wasn’t surprising. Once these high-end devices were imported to China, the foreign sellers would castrate the features, deliberately reducing hardware and software modules and impairing performance, putting it under the name of “technology restriction.”

Song Zimo’s surgery was completed, the video was cut off, and all the scores that had been awarded were perfect.

This kind of surgery was not difficult for any orthopedic surgeon. However, achieving a perfect score was significantly difficult.

President Guo from the trauma orthopedics department was going around the operating rooms informing everyone about the dinner he was hosting that night. Those not in the loop would probably think that he was either getting married or celebrating the full moon of his child.

President Guo was single, and there were no recent promotions in his title. What was this joyous event that had him happily inviting everyone to dinner at every turn?

It turned out that President Guo was ending a year’s life of being on-call around the clock, being available 24/7 for 365 days. It’s obvious that it’s a cause for celebration.

He planned to set up some tables in the hospital’s neighborhood to celebrate, and he signaled to everyone: his sisters, cousins, other unmarried female relatives, and friends could officially introduce them to him now.

Everyone in the Orthopedics department who heard the news was cheering, planning for a good gathering in the evening.

After Song Zimo completed the first operation of the Golden Knife Award, Director Han and Professor Zhang, who had nothing to do, planned to leave. Director Han asked Yang Ping to prepare the project as quickly as possible, and he would assist in applying for funding.

Takahashi approached Yang Ping when he was free, “Would you like to play tennis together after work in the afternoon?”

Yang Ping found it strange, he usually played tennis with Nurse Su in mixed doubles, what was he hinting at?

Takahashi laughed, “Not what you think—”

He then pointed to Fujiwara Miyuki who was chatting with Nurse Su about equipment.

“It’s her, Dr. Fujiwara. She saw you and Nurse Su playing tennis several times in the hospital sports hall and asked me to tell you to join them,” Takahashi was just a messenger, and it was up to Yang Ping to agree or not.

“Tennis expert!” Takahashi added explanation.

Seeing their enthusiasm, Yang Ping agreed to play: “Okay, President Guo of the trauma department invites us for a meal in the afternoon, we can all go for tennis after the meal.”

After the Golden Knife Award surgery, there were several more surgeries. Song Zimo and Xu Zhiliang were the surgeons, and Yang Ping was idle in the operating room.

He had wanted to talk to Takahashi about tissue engineering and what new research trends there were at Tokyo University.

Having been standing for so long, Yang Ping let Takahashi get a stool to sit down. He then moved a round stool and sat next to Yang Ping.

“What progress have you guys made in tissue engineering, especially the application of stem cells in tissue engineering?” Yang Ping asked Takahashi.

Takahashi was very familiar with these areas, and he discussed them passionately: “Duke University in the United States was the first to successfully cultivate muscle using stem cells. The stem cell lab at Tokyo University followed soon after by cultivating muscle as well. These muscles have the function of normal muscles and can accept stimuli and contract.”

“They used pluripotent stem cells and injected a large amount of Pax7 protein. These proteins sent signals to the stem cells, leading the stem cells to differentiate into muscle cells. Once the differentiation was complete, they stopped injecting Pax7 protein and provided the nutriment required for muscle cell development. These muscle cells were able to maintain stable division and development under this nourishment. After three to four weeks of cultivation on a prefabricated nano-3D model, the muscle cells gathered to generate muscle fibers. These muscle fibers are similar to normal human muscle fibers and can contract when stimulated, but their strength and power are not as strong as natural muscles. They transplanted the cultivated muscles onto mice, achieving a survival time of three weeks. During the survival period, they possessed normal muscle function.”

“I am one of the main persons in charge of this project in the stem cell lab at Tokyo University. The key to the technology lies in guiding the differentiation of stem cells and 3D printing of nano scaffolds. Our common obstacle now is that the cultivated muscle cells have a short survival time in experimental animals. Our time can be extended to six weeks, which is double that of the United States, but ultimately the muscle cells still disintegrate. If we can solve the mystery of the disintegration, we could grow unlimited muscle in labs in the future. Building on that, we could search for inducement substances for various tissues, so differentiating any tissue would no longer be an issue. Unfortunately, whether in America or in our country, we have only mastered one differentiation substance–Pax7 protein.”

Takahashi believed deeply in Yang Ping’s ability and was very eager to cooperate with him on this project because he had encountered an obstacle with this project and couldn’t make any more breakthroughs.

He had just learned from Director Han that the equipment in the Orthopedics lab, the 3D printer, did not have the capacity for microvision printing. This function had been neutered by the German manufacturers.

Because these advanced technologies need to be kept confidential, only the macrovision printing function is currently made available. No matter how much money is given, they won’t sell the microvision printing function, so this machine cannot perform nano-level microvision printing, lacking physical and software modules.

To conduct this experiment, the 3D module scaffold used to cultivate the muscle is indispensable; it’s used to guide the arrangement of muscle cells.

“I want to establish this project in the Orthopedics Institute, also using stem cells to grow muscle tissues. The disintegration issue lies in the mitochondria, which is equivalent to the mechanism of cell aging and death, except that it’s just an accelerated version of this mechanism. I set up this project to solve this issue. Both you and the Americans are stuck in a dead-end—”

The knowledge Yang Ping acquired from the system space, whether width or depth, was incomparable to Takahashi.

However, Yang Ping had not yet conducted such experiments. If he could cooperate with Takahashi, he could make use of their results, saving a lot of time compared to starting on his own.

Yang Ping had pinpointed the solution to the project issue but stopped speaking halfway through.

It was like patting a pocket, where there were keys making a sound, but not taking them out: “The keys are here!”

Takahashi highly recognized Yang Ping’s terrifying intelligence. He strongly believed that by cooperating with Yang Ping, they could find a way to break through.

But Yang Ping didn’t propose cooperation, he only mentioned casually that Takahashi and the Americans had already gone astray.

“Dr. Yang, if you are interested, could we cooperate?” Takahashi probed.

Yang Ping seemed uninterested, “My starting point is higher. If we do cooperate, I don’t want to deal with the basic stuff. I will only be responsible for prolonging the survival period of the post-cultivation muscle cells.”

“Sure!” Takahashi was very happy, as this was exactly the solution they wanted but couldn’t break through.