Tuesday morning we ate an early breakfast, checked out of our hotel in Hannover, stored our luggage at the train station, and made off for our day visit to the Bad Oeynhausen heart and diabetes center. After a quick welcome meeting, the group split into two. My group went with one of the scientists who worked at the hospital doing genetic research. He took us to a conference room where he had a presentation prepared for us about research and ARVC, which is Arrythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy. It was fascinating to hear him talk because he was so open about how little we really know about the body and what causes a certain mutation that could manifest itself as ARVC. It was awesome to hear about how persistent his team had been when trying to identify the cause of the disease before they pinned it down to the one mutation.
After the presentation, we had a quick lunch at the hospital’s café, and then my group got suited up for what we still had to see at Bad Oeynhausen: the open heart surgeries. After changing into scrubs and dividing into groups, my friend Luis and I thought that we were going to see a LVAD put into a patient. But when we arrived at the operating theatre, we were informed that the patient had a dilated cardiomyopathy and would be receiving an entirely artificial heart!
Once again, we missed the initial cracking open of the chest, but when we got there, the surgeons were busily cutting away at the man’s heart, making light-hearted jokes about how it was too big and “We don’t need it anymore!” And this man’s heart really was way too big. When the surgeons were done cutting, one of them reached in and grabbed it, pulling it straight out of his chest. It was literally 4 times the size of a normal heart!
After that, the surgeons began sewing in the Dacron grafts which would form the interface between the blood vessels and the artificial heart. This was sadly an extremely long process, as each graft (there were four of them) had to be sewn on meticulously and painstakingly. It was sad because we had a train to catch and ran out of time and didn’t get to see the surgeons actually put the device into the patient and start it up. But I guess I can’t complain too much. I got to see two open heart surgeries on this trip!
After the train ride back to Hannover, we ate at one of the nice local restaurants, and said our farewells to Nils, our program coordinator, who was heading back to Bonn to begin another program.
Tuesday night was our night train to Vienna. Our group had several compartments reserved for sleeping, each with 6 beds; two stacks of 3 beds, almost military style. The compartment was tiny, and fitting all of our luggage in comfortably was definitely a challenge. Then with all 6 of us at such close quarters, the tiny room began to heat up like a furnace, and the AC could barely keep up. But somehow we all managed to get a decent amount of sleep. We arrived in Vienna the next morning, and after a quick break to get settled in to the hotel, we were off on our medical tour of the city.
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