September 24, 2011

Whipstitch

One time I went to a class about penetrating chest trauma. (I was going to link to the Wikipedia article about penetrating trauma, but it had some graphic photos, so for those of you who are less inclined to gore, I withheld. For those of you who like trauma shots, check it out here).

In the class, a cardiothoracic surgeon was lecturing about how we treat trauma that occurs in "the cardiac box," the area inside these lines:
I got this picture here
He started talking all nonchalant about surgical repair of small holes in the heart wall like those caused by bullets and said something like this:

There's gonna be a lot of blood, so you'll need to hold manual pressure on the injury while someone gets your suture ready. You need a big needle and thick suture material. When it's ready, take a bit bite [that's what we call the tissue that we pick up with a suture needle], and throw a whipstitch in there to stop the bleeding.

So I'm like, "What's a whipstitch?! That sounds awesome!"

Well, ladies and gentlemen, thanks to Google images, here is a whipstitch:

I got this picture here 


The next time I saw the word whipstitch, was earlier today while looking at a pair of skinny jeans available from Nordstrom.

So yeah,  just throw a whipstitch in that guy's heart.
NBD.


1 comment:

  1. Haha. Your mom could have told you that. That is the binding stitch for quilts, too. New things every day!

    ReplyDelete