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French Doctors to Perform Zero-Gravity Surgery
STFS writes "NewScientistSpace has a story about a team of French doctors who will attempt the worlds first zero-gravity operation on a human aboard an Airbus A300 dubbed "Zero-G". The patient, according to forbes.com, was chosen because of his experience with 'dramatic gravitational shifts' as an avid bungee-jumper. The operation will serve as a test for performing surgery in space."
... I predict some serious mishaps for all involved. The Vomit Comet is a NASA plane which they use to simulate 0G conditions by the simple expedient of taking the plane up really high and then flying it towards the ground, then pulling up and repeating. As I recall the cycle between weightless and "really freaking heavy" takes about 60 seconds, with about half of that time being weightless. Any more and the plane ends up as NASA's 453rd "premature interface of craft and planet". So the surgery would be stopping and starting constantly, and as most surgeries aren't five-minute affairs I can imagine that would be a little irksome.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I bungy-jumped a couple of weeks ago and can't remember experiencing any dramatic changes in gravity. It was pulling me towards the ground for the entire jump.
I sure hope it isn't a vasectomy.
From the TFA: "The European space plane, a specially-adapted Airbus A300 operated out of Bordeaux, flies in a series of roller-coaster like parabolas, creating between 20 and 22 seconds of weightlessness at the top of the curve, a process repeated around 30 times for a 3-hour flight.
As well as the challenge of working in zero gravity, the surgical team will have to halt their work each time the plane pulls out and gravity resumes."
22 seconds multiplied by 30 is 660 seconds, that is only 11 minutes of surgery for 3 hours. I wonder if that tumor could be removed during this 3 hour session.
(I'm getting dizzy already, I'm not a rollercoaster type of person)
I am a doctor, and this is the worst type of medicine: publicity medicine. The goal is to get on the news rather than patient care. If these guys really wanted to experiment (and it is an experiment) with low-gravity surgery they would be doing it on animals long before human trials. With surgery, there are so many complications that cannot be predicted. Who knows how low-gravity affects clotting? Perhaps this guy will have a pulmonary embolus and die... there are a million what if's here that be accounted for and it's irresponsible at the least.
Good news Mr. Brown, we removed the tumor! Followed by, "We're going to have to put you under again because your liver floated away."
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Sounds like removal of a "lipoma". (I've had a few of those removed.)
Think of it as "cancer of the fat" - except benign. You get stiff fatty lumps (maybe one, maybe a scattering, maybe like a bunch of grapes). They're like regular fat with some kind of other tissue in them that makes them hard.
It's really annoying if it's above a muscle or some other easily hurt tissue: It's like a rock embedded in the fat that is SUPPOSED to be cushioning the tissue, so lying on it bruises the tissue instead.
They never go malignant so doctors will leave them in unless they're bruising something underneath or causing a disfiguring bump. They're near the surface of the skin so they're easy to cut out - usually by a dermatologist.
Sounds like the perfect test operation. Not a big deal if they don't get it all, near the surface so you don't have to cut through vital stuff or clamp stuff out of the way to get to it, etc. Easy to tell how well the op went. Much less opportunity for screwups than just about any other surgery.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A lipoma is benign, however they can undergo malignant transformation - just like any tissue in the body. Generally the small (5 cm and deep to the fascia ( a gristly layer over the muscle) tend to malignantly transform and should be excised.
,the bad ones tend to be firmer and look funny on MRI.
Dermatologist generally don't do cancer operations - they take out skin lesions a bit at a time untill they hit healthy tissue. If something is deep to the skin - i.e. a lipoma, it should be removed by a surgeon (general, or orthopaedic) that specialises in oncology. The only real way to determine if they are benign is to examine it pathologically. Generally the benign ones tend to be soft,
..........FULL STOP.