Arriving at the theatre we went through the rigmarole of changing into the lovely scrubs provided. Consultants get nice clean green ones that seem to fit quite well. We, as scum medical students, get convict outfits.
We were watching a valve replacement operation, in which both the mitral and aortic valve were removed and replaced with artificial valves. We watched the anaesthetic end of things for a while then went on to watch the operation, which I hadn’t seen before. Whilst the surgeons were removing the pleura using diathermy (electrical cautery) I noticed that the heart went into ventricular fibrillation, I watched this for about 30 seconds and when no one responded I turned and asked one of the anaesthetists if this was normal. He said it was, about 30 seconds later the senior surgeon turned up to see how things were going and pointed out that the heart was in VF and something should be done rather quickly. The patient was cardioverted and went back into sinus rhythm. The rest of the operation proceeded uneventfully with the patient making a full recovery, albeit with two metal valves in place.
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