The Surgeon’s Studio

Chapter 57: The Demon In Sea City

[I’m speechless. God, are you accepting any disciples?]

[Which hospital is the god working at? I can’t fight the urge to further my studies anymore.]

[My fifty-meter surgical sword is craving blood. I’m going to surgery now. Wait for my good news, everyone.]

The live broadcast room in Xinglin Garden was barraged with ‘666’.

The subsequent procedures were nothing new as they were similar to surgical wound closures in open surgeries. The battle would be over in two to three minutes.

Only a few viewers stared at the operation on the screen in distress. They were veterans of this live broadcast room who had witnessed this surgeon’s idea of using protein-based surgical glue to close the subcutaneous layer, and were worried about missing any details in this surgery.

However, the following surgical steps were plain and simple, pure textbook, with no additional moves.

If they had to pick out a difference, it was that the host surgeon was very stable in his manipulation, and every step was done clearly and purposefully.

The host surgeon had actually finished a surgery with a difficulty level of 9.5 without making any mistake, and many viewers failed to grasp what had just transpired.

Of the attending doctors and deputy senior consultants, who had performed dozens or more surgeries so far, only a few of them could understand the essential steps of this operation.

“He didn’t even have an assistant. Who was the camera holder just now?” mumbled the perplexed Chief Surgeon Liu who was shutting his eyes tightly to avoid watching Zheng Ren’s surgery for a split second further.

The camera holder was basically a surgical assistant whose job was to ensure a clear operative view by holding the laparoscope. It was the same as a surgical assistant holding the retractor in open surgery, but a camera holder was much more important in comparison.

If a surgical assistant was unavailable, a self-retaining retractor could at least be used.

However, a laparoscope could not be fixed, and if the camera holder was unable to keep up with the surgeon’s pace, the operative process would be affected.

Chief Surgeon Liu was unable to come up with an explanation despite racking his brain. How was Zheng Ren able to finish a laparoscopic cholecystectomy in less than twenty minutes when he did not even have an assistant?

Cen Meng was momentarily stunned after listening to Chief Surgeon Liu’s mumble. Then, he took out his phone and sent a WeChat message.

He received a reply shortly.

Cen Meng smiled bitterly upon reading the message. In the absence of a surgical assistant, the camera holder turned out to be a scrub nurse—Xie Yiren…

He finished a laparoscopic cholecystectomy just like that?

Yes, that was it.

Zheng Ren began suturing the surgical wounds. Even though the three incisions were less than one centimeter each, he still had the habit of using absorbable sutures to close the wounds with the running subcuticular suture technique.

“Chief Zheng, do you have obsessive-compulsive disorder?” Xie Yiren had begun tidying up the surgical instruments and, upon noticing it, found Zheng Ren’s choice of wound closure funny.

A reverse cutting needle with a size seven or four suture thread was more than enough to suture this sort of incision, but Zheng Ren was willing to spend more time to perform a running subcuticular suture technique instead.

“Haha, I want to do everything perfectly,” replied Zheng Ren with a smile.

The surgery progress bar on the upper right corner of his vision reached 100 percent after the last surgical wound was sutured.

Zheng Ren was satisfied.

The intensive training in the System’s operating theater had proven to be very effective.

Zheng Ren was aware of the difficulty of this surgery, but he had performed more than a hundred cholecystectomies with similar difficulty levels in the System.

Practice made perfect—that was the moral of the story.

At the end of the operation, the patient woke from his general anesthesia. Patient transfer was initiated and the resected gallbladder was sent to pathology.

The patient’s family member was sitting on a hard plastic bench outside the operating theater, visibly anxious and restless.

One of his classmates led a group in a Class Three Grade A Hospital in Imperial Capital, but they had recently fallen off contacting each other. Would it be inappropriate to seek him out only when trouble arose? After hesitating for a few seconds, he opened WeChat on his phone and started consulting his classmate.

Soon, he received a response—It was very difficult to perform surgery on this type of cholecystitis, especially when the B-scan report showed a severely edematous gallbladder wall, indicating that it had been inflamed for a few days.

His heart sank immediately.

“It can’t be helped. That’s the most common complication of acute toxic liver injury, and antibiotics can’t prevent this occurrence either. I once encountered a patient whose liver was badly damaged due to pesticide consumption and was on conservative treatment with antibiotics. In the end, he developed fungal infection complicated with cholecystitis,” his classmate shared.

It was framed as advice but just made the man’s heart sink deeper into the ground.

“You should have told me earlier and sent your father here; the success rate of the surgery will be at least 30 percent higher. This sort of surgery requires patience to lyse the adhesions. It’ll take at least three hours to complete the surgery, and that doesn’t even include the time taken for anesthesia to take effect and wear off. All things considered, the surgery will require at least four to five hours to complete, so don’t worry.”

He felt stabbed again.

“Besides, I think the possibility of successful laparoscopic surgery is quite low. It’s highly likely that the surgeon will ask you to sign another set of documents and change to an open surgery instead.”

There were other messages from his classmates.

Those who studied medicine and engaged with the medical field generally had low emotional quotients and were more direct in their conversations, just like his classmate.

Then, the doors of the operating theater opened and Zheng Ren appeared at the doorstep with a surgical stretcher trolley.

The patient’s son quickly put his phone away and approached Zheng Ren anxiously.

“Chief Zheng, do you want a signature again? Was the surgery not going well and you decided to change to an open surgery instead?” asked the patient’s son nervously, failing to notice the stretcher trolley behind Zheng Ren.

“The surgery went on smoothly. Do you want to look at the gallbladder?” asked Zheng Ren.

“…” Smoothly? The patient’s son was slightly confused.

How long had it been? The surgery had been finished within one hour, including the time taken for anesthesia to kick in and wear off? His classmate had mentioned all these to him just now, but what about the speculated four to five hours of surgery time?

Zheng Ren watched the patient’s son stand still like a statue without any response or attempt to assist with the patient transfer.

“What’s wrong? Come and lend me a hand,” said Zheng Ren.

“Uh…” The patient’s son snapped out of his thoughts and asked anxiously, “Are the adhesions serious?”

“Yes, severe adhesions.”

“So how did you finish it so quickly?” The more questions the patient’s son asked, the more uncertain he was about the current situation. Was it possible that the surgeon closed the abdomen straight away after realizing that it was actually a difficult case? Many people had heard similar rumors.

“Are the difficulty and duration of the surgery related?” Zheng Ren pushed the stretcher trolley and said, “Please press the button for the elevator.”

The patient quickly called the elevator and returned to help steer the trolley.

Something just did not sound right. Should the surgery not have taken longer if it was more difficult? Why did Doctor Zheng’s words contradict his understanding of the situation?

The surgery was too quick. His family and friends, who had been informed about the case, were still on their way to the hospital when the patient was transferred back to the ward.

After ensuring that the patient’s vital signs on the ECG monitor had stabilized, Zheng Ren then returned to his office to give medical orders.

The patient’s son left the ward and went to the operating theater when the rest of the family arrived. He wanted to see what the resected gallbladder looked like.

The nurse from the operating theater retrieved the specimen container with the resected gallbladder in it after he explained himself.

There was slender gallbladder tissue with a smooth surface inside. All pus collections had been set aside after they had been removed.

The patient’s son was relieved to see no blood on it, as laypeople judged the situation by the amount of blood on the specimen. If there was no blood on it, it meant that the surgery had been successful. He then took a photo of it as a souvenir.

Just as he was about to return to the ward, there was a notification on his WeChat.

He opened it and saw that it was a message from his classmate.

“Don’t worry about it. Even though Sea City General Hospital has an average medical standard, they shouldn’t have any problem removing the gallbladder.” His classmate “comforted” him in an outrageous manner.

“The surgery was complete and everything went well,” he replied to the text message.

“!!!!!” His classmate replied with five exclamation marks.

“Really.” The patient’s son sent the photo he took just now.

The gallbladder, pus collections and adhesive tissue were clearly visible.

Normally, pathological specimens did not contain any pus collection as they would simply break into shreds during dissection, leaving nothing to send to pathology.

However, the photo showed the removed pus collection and adhesive tissue still intact next to the gallbladder, which had been cleanly resected with its anatomical structures well visualized.

“Since when did Sea City have such a professional surgeon?!” asked his classmate in WeChat.

If he had not seen it with his own eyes, he would definitely not have believed that someone actually possessed the skills to resect the gallbladder so professionally.

The patient’s son read his classmate’s response and felt a sense of pride in his heart.

Chief Zheng from Sea City General Hospital was indeed a demon!