IT'S ALL STARTING TO COME TOGATHER

The week of April 2 to April 10 had multiple accomplishments in the Independent Study and Mentorship program. Along with working on my final product, I went back to Baylor Heart Hospital to watch another case, which turned out to be a big one. 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. Since I did not have any further communication with them, I emailed multiple professors at 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? Although during the beginning of the week I was facing these challenges, Professor Choi, Tae-Youl from UNT contacted me back and said that he would be happy to help Dr. Brinkman and I with our experiment. I also had some other achievements as well. I was honored to spend another day at The Baylor Heart Hospital shadowing Dr. Brinkman in one of his big cases. This case was on a relatively young patient, and it was originally supposed to be an aortic valve replacement. After further examination, it turned out that the patient would need a sternotomy, aortic valve replacement and a CABGx1. These three procedures combined created a very big case, and I was privileged to be able to watch something such as this. 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 and energy loss of valves with the professor and my mentor.