PROGRESSION AND SETBACKS

The week of March 27 to April 2 was full of accomplishes as well as many challenges in the Independent Study and Mentorship program. Although there were some setbacks with the progression of my final product, the main accomplishment that was achieved was watching two more surgeries, a valve sparing aortic root and also an ascending aortic replacement. The biggest challenge that I faced this past week was with contacting the UT Dallas Department of Engineering Vascular Mechanobiology Laboratory. I contacted the assistant professor of the department, Heather Hayenga, if she can allow me to use the lab, and she has referred me to Dr. Schmidtke, who has some parallel plate microfluidic flow chambers. Unfortunately, I have not heard back from him in over a week, so in the following week I will be emailing them again as well as contacting the UNT Department of Bioengineering, since they also have a lab where the study of fluid dynamics is possible. This challenge rose a new question for me: where can I find another location to study the fluid dynamics of various aortic valves? I hope to find an answer by the end of this upcoming week. Along with this challenge, I had also had some achievements as well. I was privileged enough to spend almost an entire day at The Baylor Heart Hospital shadowing Dr. Brinkman in two of his cases. The first case was a valve sparing aortic root and the second was an ascending aortic replacement. Going on these visits have been extremely interesting and beneficial for me as I am not only watching how the surgery is performed, but also the entire surgical team teaches me how to read echocardiograms, what is going on in the surgery, and always keep me involved. In the next upcoming week, I hope to begin writing my publication and devise an experimental process for the fluid dynamics test.