Funmi: Weeks 1-2

For my summer immersion term, I am working with Dr. Mathias Bostrom at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS). Dr. Bostrom specializes in hip and knee replacements, which is very clinically related to the work I'm going to be doing in Ithaca (Dr. van der Meulen's lab), so I was really excited to get started this summer. These past two weeks consisted of meeting a lot of the clinicians and researchers at HSS, learning new techniques, absorbing as much information as I can, and shadowing Dr. Bostrom while he saw patients. I have come to develop a deep appreciation for the work done at HSS. In what I would describe as an incredibly unique setting, HSS consists of engineers, biologists, surgeons, and pathologists working together to treat various orthopedic medical problems. For example, within the hospital itself, there are engineers working to develop better implants for joint replacement, surgeons who are conducting the implant surgeries in patients who need them, and biologists and pathologists who are investigating ways to treat arthritis in order to prevent joint deterioration. The entire process comes full circle, as clinical fellows have the opportunity to work with the engineers in examining implants that have failed, investigating why such implants failed, and brainstorming what can be done in an engineering sense to prevent such failures.

It's really fascinating how at some point, particularly in biomedical engineering, the engineering tends to divert from medicine, however this is certainly not the case at HSS. To that point, I had the opportunity to see some of Dr. Bostrom's patients this week, and it gave me a whole new perspective on orthopedic research. I was able to see a range of patients, from those who had just received a hip or knee implant and were pain-free for the first time in years, to those who had been living with pain and would have to receive an implant soon. Most of these patients were older with arthritis in their hip and/or knee joints. It was amazing to hear that hip implants could last a patient upwards of 20 to 30 years, and it made me appreciate how successful the interaction between engineering and orthopedic medicine has been in the past decade. It has been an informative two weeks and I look forward to the next five weeks here, as I continue to shadow Dr. Bostrom and conduct a clinically relevant small project in the field.