Surgical electives for M3-M4?

[swoopyswoop]

So I'm interested in surgery but not 100%. Here are options for electives. Peds surgery is appealing to me at this point. I've done a month of general adult, and transplant. Any input on good electives that might help me with my decision?

Peds cardiothoracic
Peds gen surg
Surg-onc
Plastic/reconstructive
vascular
thoracic
cardiac

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[ACSurgeon]

Obviously this will depend on your institution (i.e. which rotations are historically enjoyed by students). I would recommend peds surg since it is true general surgery. If you have good surg onc faculty, that's a great experience from an anatomy and patient management standpoint. Vascular and thoracic can be good experiences also, but given the specialization, most general surgeons are not doing complex thoracic or vascular surgeries. Plastics and cardiac are unlikely to help you decide if general surgery is for you.

 

[swoopyswoop]

I'll talk to the people who did peds and surgonc and see what their thoughts were. Those were the two I was leaning towards.

 

[Kaustikos]

Peds cardiothoracic
Peds gen surg
Surg-onc
Plastic/reconstructive
vascular
thoracic
cardiac

Peds Cardio - I saw a lot of rare congenital heart diseases which were cool/interesting. The downside is that these procedures are really complex/require a lot of trained hands so you won't be doing a lot during that. Or that was my impression/experience. I enjoyed it for the time, but if you're looking for more hands on, you may not get that. But then again, I'm situated in a city that handles all of the states pediatric cases and specifically congenital heart. It may be different where you're at.

Vascular - I'm doing that right now and it's been enjoyable. You get to see a lot of procedures that you'll be doing during general surgery residency - AAA (endo vs open), bypass, vascular emergencies, CEAs. In the end; vascular surgery (from my experience) has dealt with every part of the body outside of the head. We've even done amputations (BKA/AKA). The one drawback is there's a lot of micro-surgery requiring loops so you may not get to do as much.

Cardiothoracic - Just finished a month of that and I gotta say it was awesome. I'd say do cardiothoracic over peds cardio because you'll get to do more. Lobectomies/tumor resections/etc etc were cool pulm procedures. In the end; you got training on how to approach thoracic procedures which is key.

I was recommended plastics because they told me it'd train me in becoming better at suturing/closing/etc. We'll see.

In the end; I'd honestly ask people at your school how they see these electives.

 

[mimelim]

If you are trying to figure out whether or not to apply into general surgery, you should be doing Thoracic or Vascular. The rest all depend on your interest level and the quality of programs at your school. But, none of them outside of those two are going to help you decide about GS or not.

 

[django7]

vascular is great. i went to a few during general surgery. during a DRIL procedure the vascular surgeon and fellow would be working on the arm vessels and they let me suture the leg wound from the harvest. good suturing practice
+1 thoracic. touching heart/lungs is awesome and my anatomy knowledge increased exponentially