Chapter 354: [(354)] Was praised by the old professor Chapter 354: [(354)] Was praised by the old professor “She went to have an ultrasound, and they said there was nothing wrong with her appendix. If there was suspicion of a problem with her urinary or gynecological system, the ultrasound didn’t show anything. Later, I found that when my hand pressed below her navel towards the bladder area, she felt discomfort, a kind of pulling pain,” Xie Wanying reported her line of thinking. “I suddenly remembered that this area might be related to the urachus. With an ultrasound, unless it’s imaged directly at that area, as the teacher said, generally doctors wouldn’t suspect this place. If the urinary stones are too small, anything within 1 centimeter can be missed by an ultrasound–only a CT can confirm it. I ultimately suggested that she go get a CT scan of that area to see what’s going on.”
“How long did you perform the palpation for?” Professor Li asked. As an experienced professor, he knew that it would be hard to detect such subtle symptoms, so he was curious how the intern managed to identify the issue.
“I pressed on it for about half an hour,” Xie Wanying recalled, estimating the time she had examined the patient.
A half-hour examination focusing just on the abdomen is indeed something an intern would have time for, as they harbor the curiosity necessary for slow and deliberate study. Clinical doctors, relying on experience, whisk through the palpation quickly out of habit. If a palpation took half a day, patients might doubt the doctor’s competence. Yet, when medical students do it, no one questions them since the patients know they’re students.
A bunch of doctors could only give a wry smile after hearing this.
That being said, even though patients don’t usually question medical students, very few students actually have the patience to repetitively practice their examination techniques and ponder over the patient’s condition, let alone actually have realizations about the parts that seasoned clinicians might miss in their diagnoses.
Such medical students need more than just persistence; they also need a solid foundation. Rare diseases don’t have much to do with innate talent; a strong base is much more important. Rare diseases often lurk in the corners of medical research and require doctors to recall their comprehensive knowledge of the basics at any time.
“The fact that you thought of the urachus during your palpation implies that you have studied anatomy very well,” Professor Li sincerely complimented the student.
Flattered by the professor’s praise, Xie Wanying shook her head, remaining factual: “I was able to think of it not just because of anatomy but also because I studied embryology and pathology.”
Professor Li and his colleagues had to think: Ah, right.
Without understanding embryology, these kinds of rare diseases related to regressed body parts would likely be forgotten even if mentioned in anatomy. Embryology, after all, deals with the differentiation and development of the body’s structures.
In fact, anatomy rarely mentions the urachus. This area typically regresses to become the median umbilical ligament in infancy, so there’s little to dissect. In cases of rare diseases, even keeping a specimen is difficult. Anatomy labs at medical schools don’t have such patient specimens; maybe hospital specimen rooms might.
There’s another deeper reason that Xie Wanying is unlikely to mention: before she was reborn, she specialized in pathology, and mastering it required a thorough understanding of embryology first.
“How many points did you get in your embryology exam?” her seniors asked eagerly.
Xie Wanying hesitated to boast in front of everyone.
Gao Zhaocheng turned to ask her two classmates: “How many points did she score?”
“Mmm–perfect score,” Lin Hao answered, as the class president, Yue Wentong, the Silent Gourd, wouldn’t be the first to speak up.
“And how much did you guys score?”