Need topic for Surgery Presentation

[nmehta]

I need help in determining a surgery presentation topic. My audience is the course director and the other 3rd year students, and people are doing very non-traditional topics, such as the psychiatry of surgery, truth telling in surgery, and holographic imaging in CT scans.

I would love to do something ortho related, but i having a difficult time taking a step back and finding something simple and interesting.

Thanks!

Neel

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[doc05]

the ever-popular case presentation that is seen in probably every single surgery clerkship. Topics such as "psychiatry of surgery" etc, are probably presented by dweebs who have no interest in surgery.

An ortho topic would be better, for example "proper diagnosis and treatment of osteomyelitis." simple, and also important for a broad general medical audience.

I would recommend something along the lines of general surgery, since most clerkship course directors aren't orthopods. Topics include "the acute abdomen," "management of AAA's," "approaches to hernia repairs," "assessing the need for lower extremity revascularization," "management of small bowel obstruction," etc. You get the idea.

Remember that the shelf is all about management, so you may as well kill 2 birds with one stone and learn about a bread-and-butter topic that is likely to appear on the shelf. good luck.

Originally posted by nmehta
I need help in determining a surgery presentation topic. My audience is the course director and the other 3rd year students, and people are doing very non-traditional topics, such as the psychiatry of surgery, truth telling in surgery, and holographic imaging in CT scans.

I would love to do something ortho related, but i having a difficult time taking a step back and finding something simple and interesting.

Thanks!

Neel

 

[Foxxy Cleopatra]

Pulmonary embolism- prevention and treatment.

It's a big part of what we do with post-op/ hip fracture/ non-weight bearing (for sometimes up to 3 months) patients. Here, we usually use lovenox/ coumadin overlap to reach a goal INR or 2-3 and then continue p.o. coumadin.

In a general surgery patient, you will feel the perceived importance of TED/SCD/ bid SQ heparin when your first patient throws a PE on the floor. You could also throw in something about cancer patients, who tend to be hypercoaguable.

Once someone does throw a PE, you could include what you would do (lab/study/diagnostic work-up, heparin drip, consider TPA.)

It's not the most astoundingly interesting thing in surgery, but I think about it in every patient that I anticipate will not be ambulating for a few days. And when I saw my first one, it made me adament that making sure that preventitive/prophylactic orders ar not only written for, but carried out (TEDs/SCDs don't do much good when they are heaped on the pt's floor.)

 

[edmadison]

A great quick and dirty presentation is hyperparathyroidism. Very discrete topic. The key to picking topics is to pick something that is very closed ended. This will limit the number of questions that can be asked to make you look stupid.

Ed

 

[bobbyseal]

My classmate did his talk on circumcision.

We're talking full powerpoint presentation in the grand rounds auditorium with multiple weiner shots throughout it.

Could have been the funniest thing watching all these old attendings wiggle in their seats with big Jim and his twins on the screen.

 

[VitaminK]

I've been assigned to do my surgery talk on the "Treatment and Diagnosis of Breast Masses". So if anyone of you out there have previously done this topic feel free to help me out!

 

[lattimer13]

how about diagnosis and treatment of a prolapsed rectum?

 

[Winged Scapula]

Several of the above are good ideas. While I understand your desire to do something ortho related (and management of multiple trauma, prevention of DVT/PE/surgical anticoagulation), you might benefit more from a more general surgical topic that crosses specialties.

For example, how about something general like Surgical Nutrition (ie, who needs TPN, what do you need to consider, etc.) or Post-Operative Infection? Both are topics that are useful as well in medicine and since your Surgical exam will be mostly medicine/trauma oriented you might get a head start on studying for those.

 

[njbmd]

Originally posted by nmehta
I need help in determining a surgery presentation topic. My audience is the course director and the other 3rd year students, and people are doing very non-traditional topics, such as the psychiatry of surgery, truth telling in surgery, and holographic imaging in CT scans.

I would love to do something ortho related, but i having a difficult time taking a step back and finding something simple and interesting.

Thanks!

Neel

Hi there,

How about doing Spine clearance difficulties in Trauma Patients. You could show some CTs, radiographs and give some instruction on how and why this is done. This will be a great learning experience for you and can be done in a relatively short period of time.

njbmd

 

[po' boy]

Choosing PE/DVT is a really smart idea. I did that topic back on my surgery rotation a few months ago. It's unbelievably important and applies to every single hospitalized patient, especially those who are post-op, immobile, obese, older, pregnant, or have a malignancy or inherited thrombophilia -- pretty much everybody.

(Also, you can tweak and reuse your presentation on other rotations, namely OB/GYN, medicine, urology, orthopedics...it's practically the only presentation that you can recycle on both surgical and medical clerkships! But your classmates may hate you after hearing it more than twice...)