Week 1 - Getting Started

Hello everyone, I am so excited to be getting started with this year's immersion term. I spent a lot of this week attending orientation meetings, completing trainings, and getting security clearances for both HSS and WCM. The most interesting parts of this first week were the first few research meetings I was able to attend.

The first meeting was with Andreas Kontaxis, Ph.D., a research supervisor who works with my clinical mentor (Dr. Michael Fu). We discussed three potential research projects I could contribute to this summer. The first is an extension of an ongoing collaboration between the Andarawis-Puri lab (my home lab in Ithaca) and Dr. Fu's research group. This project would involve expansion of existing code used to analyze areas of high impingement in the glenoid following total shoulder arthroplasty (TSA). If I choose to take on this project, I will expand the analysis to a larger patient cohort and perform statistical analyses to evaluate correlations between implant placement and impingement presence. The second potential project would involve analyzing force data collected while manipulating cadaveric limbs following muscular release during TSA. This muscle release and reattachment is designed to improve the ability of the patient to externally rotate their arm following TSA, but success of the method is dependent on brain plasticity of the patient as well as location of the reattachment. The work I would perform on this project would serve to inform surgical methods for this particular procedure. Finally, the third project we discussed involved performing finite element analysis of cadaveric shoulders following TSA. Questions remain in the field about the best angle to install the glenoid implant to minimize instability and maximize range of motion. I would again analyze data collected in the motion analysis laboratory, this time with the ultimate goal of developing a method to determine on a patient-by-patient basis the best installation angle for the shoulder replacement hardware. 

I was able to virtually attend a presentation given by a current medical resident on Type III AC joint injuries. The opportunities available to me here to learn about such a wide range of injuries are super exciting. Listening to the interactions between the residents/fellows and attendings was a great introduction into understanding how to communicate effectively with the surgeons I will be shadowing this summer. One of my main goals for the summer is to broaden my understanding of anatomy beyond just the knee, which is the joint I am currently the most comfortable with. I hope that between working with a shoulder surgeon and attending more presentations like this one I will be able to come away with a functional understanding of every key joint in the body.

We also had an onboarding meeting with Dr. Min, Dr. Wang, and Dr. Prince regarding our program outlook and getting settled in New York City. I feel very welcomed here, and I am so excited for the rest of the summer! Next week I am looking forward to beginning to shadow Dr. Fu, both in the OR and in the clinic, as my HSS medical/security clearance has now been fully processed. I hope to be able to shadow orthopedic surgeons in a variety of fields/watch surgery performed on a wide range of joints and I look forward to building connections during this experience that I will maintain for the rest of my career.

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