Delivering the first rays of sunshine to patients in the New Year

     At 4 a.m. on January 1, 2016, an ambulance speeding from a local hospital in Changzhou drove smoothly into Jing’an District Central Hospital (Huashan Hospital Jing’an Branch Fudan-affiliated Jing’an District Central Hospital (fundraising)). “Master! Quickly push a cot over and pick up the patient.” “Open the green channel quickly!” “Dr. Chen, just now the neurosurgery department notified that the transferred patient to be received is here, please go to the monitoring room to receive the patient.” According to the instructions of the chief duty officer, the pre-screening nurses methodically recorded the patient’s vital signs and handled the receiving procedures, and the doctors of the relevant departments were also in place in time, scrambling to make preoperative preparations. On December 31, 2015, when Ms. Chen was in emergency at a local hospital in Changzhou for the third time due to brain stem hemorrhage, she developed symptoms such as general numbness, difficulty in breathing and eye movement disorder, and her condition was very critical. After being told that the hospital had no surgical capacity and recommended transfer, Ms. Chen’s family was in despair. After several attempts, the family contacted the neurosurgery department of Jing’an District Central Hospital and went through the transfer procedure. That evening, the ambulance took Ms. Chen’s family straight to Shanghai, seeking a chance to beat death.  After receiving a call from the patient’s family, Gu Xin, deputy director of neurosurgery at Jing’an Central Hospital, immediately asked Professor Hu Jie, a specialist at Huashan Hospital, for instructions. Professor Hu immediately decided to accept the patient and acted as the chief surgeon for this surgery. While waiting for the patient, Professor Hu organized several doctors from the neurosurgery department of the hospital to make a scientific assessment of the patient’s condition as well as the risks and difficulties of the surgery, and quickly developed a set of detailed surgery plan. The first two hemorrhages, though small, were located underneath the pontine brain, which is a “no-operation zone”. On January 1, 11:30 a.m., Ms. Chen was wheeled into the operating room and the surgery began. The anesthesiologist, hand-washing traveling nurse, and the attending surgeon worked in tacit cooperation to smoothly incise the inferior cerebellar earthworm and expose the dorsal side of the brainstem with a snakeskin automatic retractor fixation to reach the lesion site. At this point, the atmosphere in the operating room was unusually gloomy, and any redundant small operation might bring irreparable consequences. Under the microscope, Professor Hu Jie cautiously and neatly removed the hematoma from the dorsal side of the brainstem and successfully found the “culprit” that caused the repeated brainstem hemorrhage, the cavernous hemangioma, and removed it completely. At this point, the anesthesia monitor showed stable vital signs. The patient’s family, who had been waiting anxiously outside the operating room for five hours, shed tears of excitement and gratitude when they learned that the surgery had been successfully completed.  The patient’s smile is the greatest comfort New Year’s Day 2016, for Ms. Chen’s family can be said to be a big day when the fire of life was rekindled. For the neurosurgery team, it was as ordinary as an ordinary working day, because the medical staff has long been accustomed to the rhythm of “giving up rest to save patients”. “Since putting on the white coat, as long as I hear a simple ‘doctor, you have worked hard’ and see a smile on the patient’s face, I feel that all efforts are worth to. Because we are the doctors who save lives and help the injured.” Gu Xin, deputy director of neurosurgery, said this. Reporters learned that since the Jing’an District Central Hospital and Huashan Hospital established a medical consortium, the two hospitals neurosurgery cooperation and exchange more and more extensive. With the help of flexible mobile experts from Huashan General Hospital, the hospital’s neurosurgery team has significantly improved its surgical techniques and quality, and the average annual volume of more than 800 surgeries is among the top in neurosurgery in the same level of medical institutions.