THE ONE WHERE FINAL PRODUCT BEGINS

During the week of February 5 to February 11, the main accomplishments in the second year of the Independent Study and Mentorship program includes the creation of a rough draft of the final product proposal as well as beginning personal preliminary research to prepare myself for final product.

After narrowing down a list of ideas that would take quite some time to complete and may not be feasible for a high school student to do at this time, I finally found what I will be pursuing for my final product this year. My current idea is that with the help of Dr. Brinkman and a team of surgeons, we will be evaluating the survival rate, heart and valvular function postoperative of valve sparing aortic root replacement procedure versus the composite root replacement procedure through a series of echocardiograms taken from the patient.

I believe this project will be quite beneficial for me and the community as it dives deeper into cardiothoracic surgery and tests the effectiveness of two common procedures. I am quite excited and honored for this research opportunity and getting to work with many surgeons, as this will greatly enhance my medical knowledge.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be researching the step-by-step procedural techniques of the David and the Bental procedures, as well as look further into my final product in the aspect of data collection.