Surgery Godfather-Chapter 455 - 416 Three Gluttonous Snakes

Chapter 455: Chapter 416: Three Gluttonous Snakes

Chapter 455: Chapter 416: Three Gluttonous Snakes

David Hollis exited the cabin to examine the MDM. It couldn’t be repaired, it could only be replaced.

Fortunately, the ferocity of the Russian Union rocket was unequivocal. It completed the docking in three hours and forty minutes, successfully performing a space delivery task.

At last, with the help of a safety tether, David Hollis and the Russian astronaut completed the spacewalk, replacing the electrical component and ensuring the power system.

The whole operation took exactly five hours.

Stable voltage removed the worry of any downtime for the robotic arm’s control system.

The surgery could proceed, but time was running short for Yang Ping.

All over the angiogram of the brain, a micro-aneurysm had expanded perilously close to its limit – ready to burst at any moment. A second started to inflate speedily, and a third was appearing faintly.

IBM’s Watson had been right, there was a second aneurysm. Yang Ping was also right – a third was quietly surfacing.

“Given the speed at which he initially accessed the cerebral vascular network, it would take at least half an hour to address a single aneurysm. Now there are three; there’s just not enough time,” John Ansen began to worry, considering how three needed to be resolved at once.

Yang Ping instructed Susan to change the equipment for simultaneous puncture of the left femoral artery, right femoral artery, and left radial artery.

Simultaneous puncture? Was he intending to insert three guidewires at once? How could that be possible?

Massimo looked at the screen, then glanced around the hall – he was not the only one surprised.

But that’s what Yang Ping’s voice conveyed over the broadcast: punctures at three locations, and the insertion of three micro guide wires simultaneously.

Three guidewires simultaneously weaving through human blood vessels, entering cranial blood vessels, and finally reaching the target microartery.

This required the surgeon to be extremely familiar with the patient’s cranial vascular pathway. Understanding the intertwining, forking, and looping of millions of blood vessels was not within the realm of human anatomical knowledge.

The surgery robot had four robotic arms. Only one was needed to do the intervention. If the operations were performed one after the other, wouldn’t that be a waste of time?

But if three robotic arms operated simultaneously, the procedure would be shorter, thereby significantly reducing surgical risk.

Yet, the simultaneous insertion of three guidewires seemed like something out of a myth.

Within interventional surgery, there have been cases of two guidewires being inserted – like the dual guidewire technique in cardiac intervention. But this was a completely different ball game.

In cardiac intervention, there is a dual guidewire technique. During the process of percutaneous coronary intervention, a second, 0.36-millimeter coronary guidewire is inserted alongside the first coronary artery guidewire. This stabilizes the guiding catheter, aiding the passage of the balloon and stent – this is the buddy guidewire technique.

In the percutaneous coronary treatment of bifurcation lesions, a guidewire is placed to protect the coronary branch vessels. Once the stent is deployed, the guidewire is withdrawn from between the vessel wall and stent – this is the protective guidewire technique.

In the percutaneous treatment of chronic total occlusions, when the first guidewire enters the subintimal space, it is left in place as a marker of the false lumen while a second, stiffer, guidewire is advanced into the true lumen – this is the parallel guidewire technique.

Regardless of the dual guidewire technique, the secondary guidewire is always an aid, not three guidewires treating different targets independently.

But it seemed that’s exactly what Yang Ping was about to do!

Getting a single guidewire safely to a microartery in the brainstem is already an arduous task. Now, three are to be released simultaneously. And throughout their journey, they cannot repeat, intersect, or touch any pathways. This kind of route planning demanded an artificial intelligence level of proficiency, not feasible for humans.

Professor Eugene switched seats, joining John Ansen and Massimo.

“Are you sure he’s going to launch from all three puncture points and operate simultaneously?” asked Massimo.

“That should be impossible. Of the three guidewires, two should be like our dual guidewire technique and act as an aid, right?” was Eugene’s guess.

“No, just now, Dr. Yang said that they would operate the three guidewires simultaneously and independently, each having its own target. He wanted to solve all three aneurysms at once,” John Ansen had indeed heard Yang Ping say that even if he didn’t believe it himself.

He was planning to embark on embolization of three aneurysms simultaneously, yes, simultaneously. This would be a world-first.

Three robotic arms operating independently, leaving the fourth as an assistant. It was an unbelievable proposition.

While everyone was left in confusion, all speculation became irrelevant.

Three guidewires were already being inserted into the blood vessels by the robotic arms, navigating over hills and through valleys, making a long trek, step by step towards the cranial blood vessels. They all embarked from different paths, completely unrelated.

All roads lead to Rome!

The body’s blood vessels are the same, the true essence of intervention was already mastered by Yang Ping.

The angiographic imagery of all brain vessels looked like ink, the three guidewires rushed forward like a race, moving along the blood vessels.

The extremely smooth snake-like guidewires worked smoothly under Yang Ping’s hands. No matter the angle at any fork – acute, obtuse, or right angle, the extraordinary guidewires managed to glide past effortlessly.

Like agile hungry snakes, the three guidewires moved in an enchanting and magical manner.

However, those three slender, serpentine structures were moving into the depths of the human brain, penetrating deeper along the complex network of vessels.

The whole surgery displayed on the screen was like a game, the agile motion of the snake-like entities unnerving the audience. This made observers feel as if those tiny entities were slithering inside their own bodies, triggering spasms in the pores and causing their scalps to tingle.

The largest aneurysm might have already reached its limit. GG Company’s artificial intelligence was consistently flashing red lights indicating that the blood vessels could burst at any moment.

And the second has already swelled, the third is forming, swelling faster than the previous two.

There’s a limit to how far the guidewire can penetrate the blood vessel. This not only relates to the diameter of the vessel, but also to the surgeon’s precision in controlling the guidewire. The guidewire cannot enter a vessel larger than itself, nor can it randomly bypass branches to reach the target vessel. There are always branches that it cannot pass.

Not all target vessels can be reached, and not all aneurysms are suitable for intervention.

“Three guidewires have simultaneously entered the cranium? Aimed at three different cerebral aneurysms.” Massimo finally believed it. This was a high-dimensional being, beyond his reach.

No doctors in the world would dare or could do what is required: simultaneous insertion of three guidewires. But that’s exactly what Steven must do now. It’s the only hope.

If it hadn’t been for an accident, Dr. Yang would have plenty of time to resolve each brain aneurysm one by one, but the accident had consumed more than five hours. He was only left with one hour, maybe less than an hour.

Other than the triple-action approach, he had no other method.

The robotic arm’s inherent advantage was maximized in Yang Ping’s hands – as were all other instruments; they always reached their extreme potentials when handled by him.

The more he delved into smaller and deeper vessels, the more complicated their intersections became, and the pathways became harder to identify.

Some of the well-known blood vessels have simple layers, but the blood vessels that Yang Ping needs to enter now are unnamed arteries, to the depth of who knows how many layers.

With this type of intervention, there are only a handful of people in the world who can stay on track, locate the target blood vessels clearly. Massimo is one of them, but he has only just touched the doorknob of this field.

The ongoing surgery requires the practitioner’s knowledge of the cranial, especially the brainstem part of the vascular study far exceeds the current anatomical research.

No doctor could reach this level of anatomy knowledge. Neither surgeons, interventionists, nor internal medicine doctors can achieve this. Even a professor studying human anatomy at a medical school can’t do this. It would require a massive amount of “cadaver teachers” for research, conditions that no one possesses.

The total length of the brain’s vascular system, including the arteries, veins, and capillaries, would stretch to 1.6 million kilometers if laid out in a straight line. The Earth has a circumference of only 40,000 kilometers. What a complex network this is!

Our understanding of this vascular network is far from complete; we are still only focused on some central routes.

From centimeters, to millimeters, to submillimeters, the three guidewires kept descending. They need to reach their destinations and complete the task within the last half hour.

This is their one and only chance, their last resort.

Massimo was hunched up, feeling icy in the warmth of the hall like a fever victim. If he could, he would wrap himself in a heavy blanket.

Intense anxiousness not only consumes adrenaline but also large amounts of heat due to the excessive continuous muscle contractions and sweat evaporation.

“He’s really dealing with three aneurysms at once, he’s really controlling three guidewires simultaneously!” Massimo murmured.

John Ansen saw the look in Massimo’s eyes, the very look of nothingness that was once in his own eyes, like all the glory and brilliance he had was dashed to pieces at this moment.

“I told you, he is one dimension higher than us,” said John Ansen. He was relatively more composed, having been tempered once before.

Dr. Eugene was no better than Massimo: “He is operating four robotic arms with two hands, three main surgery robotic arms and one assisting robotic arm.”

Dr. Eugene’s words reminded everyone that these four robotic arms are controlled by Yang Ping’s two hands.

But without a single false move, every time a guidewire needed to slow down and stop to bypass a fork, the other two would rush forward at high speed. When it was another guidewire’s turn to stop at a fork, the guidewire that had just stopped had already turned, bypassing the fork.

Like a juggler throwing several balls at once, Yang Ping was controlling four robotic arms with his two hands, always keeping two robotic arms moving while the other two rested. But resting wasn’t really resting. It was each time they paused to maneuver a risky bypass.

The robotic arm’s ability to rotate at any angle made the guidewire even more flexible than when operated by human hands.

The speed of the guidewire kept slowing down, but it never lost its flexibility and precision.

Because the vessels were getting thinner and any ruffled movement could be fatal. Any hasty or significant movement would make the guidewire uncontrollable due to inertia. So, they had to slow down at this stage.

However, the more guidewire is released, the harder it becomes to control the direction of the tip.

As the vessels got thinner and the guidewire kept descending, it was like a submarine diving deeper and deeper, sinking to the very bottom of the sea.

The deeper you go, the thinner it gets, the more dangerous it becomes, and the harder it is to control.

This kind of depth, this kind of sinking, there is no way back – it’s either a success or a failure.

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This is why Yang Ping didn’t want to perform the operation when the voltage was unstable. He had to take down the enemy in one strike, without any chance of turning back, without any chance of remedying anything.

Success or failure, it’s all down to this one time. Life or death, it’s all down to this one opportunity. They had already sunk deeply into the blood vessels of the brainstem, and there was no chance to withdraw the guidewire.

“They’re still not lost in the maze-like blood vessels network. They’re each taking the closest route.”

Massimo dared not even breathe too heavily or too fast. This was the most crucial moment. He had once used the finest guidewire, with the help of various auxiliary equipment, to intervene in the central blood vessels of a monkey’s brain stem. Here he was, after fatal trials on many monkeys-

On the huge crystal-clear screen, three slender wires crawled like winding snakes.

Everyone held their breaths, amazed by how far the wires have traversed.

At this moment, nothing must go wrong!