Today was a day full of surgeries. The first one was the most interesting of the four. Dr. Logel did a debridement and stem cell injection of the patient’s achilles to repair the tear. The way he did this was he took blood from the patient’s arm and placed the vile in a centrifuge which separated the hemoglobin from the plasma (containing the platelets). Dr. Logel took the plasma and injected it into the patient’s achilles hoping that it would stimulate growth and repair the torn achilles tendon. I just thought that this was extremely cool and a great demonstration of how medicine is constantly evolving. Another surgery that he did today was inserting a joint cartilage implant at the big toe. This implant was only just approved by the FDA 6 months ago, so it’s extremely new. The implant is meant as an alternative solution to arthritis in the toe joints. Most commonly, arthritis in these joints is solved by fusion of the joints which inhibits movement of that joint. With the help of this implant, it allows for space between the joints, so that arthritis isn’t a problem. Arthritis occurs when the cartilage between joints has been worn down to the point where it’s just bone on bone which is painful. The surgery consist of Dr. Logel shaving down the ends of each joint to smooth the bones and then drilling a hole to fit the implant into and placing the implant into the hole. After the implant is placed, the surgery is complete. That was definitely pretty cool to witness especially considering it has only been performed a dozen times and he’s done the surgery 7 times.