Staring at soone like that is impolite. Hearing Doctor Song say it was fine, Xie Wanying nodded. She had faith in Doctor Song. Doctor Song was a genius with exceptional intelligence and also knew how to tread carefully.
The two went to the Observation Room. The elderly lady had completed her CT scan and returned, but the CT report wouldn’t be ready for a while. Song Xueling conducted another specialized physical exam on the elderly lady and instructed the nurse to take the patient to the inpatient departnt first. He would review the report in the inpatient departnt afterward.
Based on the patient’s current situation, they needed to first check whether the CT showed acute brain hemorrhage and whether the volu of bleeding warranted imdiate ergency surgery. If not, conservative treatnt would likely continue tonight, and they would discuss the next steps tomorrow when Cao Yong returned to work.
The elderly lady’s daughter packed up their belongings and accompanied her mother to the Neurosurgery Inpatient Departnt.
While arranging for the patient to be admitted, Xie Wanying thought of Liu Wenyu’s condition and wanted to take the opportunity to seek Doctor Song’s opinion.
Song Xueling listened to her and asked, "Cardiothoracic Surgery? Cardiology?"
"Aren’t those two departnts famously at odds?"
Every hospital is the sa—Cardiology and Cardiothoracic Surgery are constantly competing for cases. As he’d ntioned before, his dislike for Cardiothoracic Surgery was precisely because of this.
In Neurosurgery, at most, they had interactions with Neurology. Neurology’s profitability was poor and couldn’t compare to Neurosurgery. Neurosurgery could prescribe the sa dications as Neurology. As for the physical therapies Neurology provided, to him as a surgeon, they were almost equivalent to placebo treatnts or simple hot compresses, with minimal effect. Late-stage limb function training for patients belonged to the domain of professional rehabilitation departnts, which had little to do with Neurology.
Cardiology, on the other hand, was different—it actively encroached on Cardiothoracic Surgery’s domain. New interventional procedures, combined with the developnt of interventional dication and devices, had significantly shrunk the scope of traditional cardiothoracic surgeries. At this rate, more than half of Cardiothoracic Surgery’s procedures risked being taken over by interventional treatnts.
Originally, such procedures should have been perford by Cardiothoracic surgeons. The fundantal distinction between internal dicine and surgery lies in whether or not surgery is perford. However, breakthroughs in various scientific and technological advancents have led to the ergence of new types of surgical thods, blurring this line. Visionary scholars, both dostically and internationally, have predicted that in the future, there might no longer be a distinction between internal dicine and surgery.
At its core, interventional procedures are still surgeries. They are closely related to the foundational principles of surgical anatomy, giving surgeons a considerable advantage in performing these interventions. This has been widely recognized both dostically and internationally. Moreover, if an interventional procedure fails, it often has to be converted to a surgical procedure. For example, if a laparoscopic surgery fails, it needs to be changed to an open surgery. If interventional procedures were perford by surgeons, the consistency in surgical precision could undoubtedly be better maintained.
In light of this, Guo Zhi Hospital, as a national leader in cardiovascular care, has taken the lead in reform, preparing to establish a Cardiac Center that does away with the distinction between internal dicine and surgery. The team will primarily consist of surgeons, essentially allowing Cardiothoracic surgeons to perform traditional cardiac procedures as well as interventional surgeries.
If not for his interest in the human brain, had he chosen another major surgical specialty, Cardiothoracic Surgery at Guo Zhi would undoubtedly have been his first choice.
For Guoxie to undergo reform, as a comprehensive tertiary hospital with nurous departnts and intertwined, complex internal interests, the resistance would be substantial.
From the perspective of dical developnt, in the future, centers like Cardiac Centers, Renal Centers, and Hepatobiliary Centers—conducting dical care based on organs without differentiating between internal and surgical dicine—will likely beco the trend. As a result, Guoxie’s Hepatobiliary Surgery departnt has been aggressively proactive, directly suppressing the nascent Hepatology departnt during its inception. It can be imagined that once the New Surgical Building is completed and space becos available, Guoxie will use Hepatobiliary Surgery as a basis to experint with building this kind of comprehensive treatnt center.
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