The nurse then proceeded to continue briefing her on the patient.

When they reached the theatre, Chen Lihua went into the room by the side to wash her hands.

​​

She prepped herself up for the surgery, and then immediately she entered the theatre.

Chen Lihua immediately addressed the people that would be assisting her with the surgery briefly before they started.

"We are here today to fix her leaky heart valve and the two bypasses that will restore proper flow to the heart, and I think this will help improve her shortness of breath and reduce her risk of heart failure and heart attacks in the future."

The patient was transferred from another hospital outside of City B for further management.

The patient had shortness of breath when she came in. It was evaluated then with cardiac catheterization. This test revealed that she had the severe coronary disease and two of her blood vessels. Also, she had a valve which was like a one-way door that was completely busted.

At the beginning of the surgery, Chen Lihua opened the sternum to gain access to the heart.

When she got to the valve, she examined it to see if it was fixable or not. If it wasn't fixable, an animal valve would be used for replacement instead of an artificial valve because of her (the patient) age.

The female patient was in her early seventies.

In heart surgery, the heart is not removed from the patient. Instead, the doctors get the heart to stop beating so they could work on it, and that is done by attaching the patient to a heart-lung machine, just like what Chen Lihua did with this particular patient.

A heart-lung machine is a complex machine that is run by a cardiovascular perfusionist.

This machine takes over the function of the heart and lungs for a few hours, while the doctors worked on the heart.

Now fully into the surgery, Chen Lihua took a vein from a part of the patient's leg, to use for her bypass.

This vein will allow blood to go around the blockage in her heart arteries, to the heart muscle without any obstruction.

The patient's leg will not miss that vein because her leg has many veins available, so by removing that vein, there is still plenty of blood circulation to the leg.

The vein taken from the patient's leg was used for her heart, to again bring proper blood flow to the heart muscle around the area of the blockage.

So looking at the heart and getting ready to stop it from beating during this operation, to do two bypasses and the repair on the patient's mitral valve.

Doing this gets to deliver medicine to the heart that actually stops it and keeps it protected and alive while the doctors worked on it.

In this surgery that Chen Lihua was performing, there is high risk because the patient has a lot of comorbidities that are other than the heart disease that caused her to be at a higher risk.

The patient has very bad lungs, her lungs on room air, only have a saturation of 85%, which could make her have shortness of breath. Also, she has weak lungs overall as for strength.

Besides, she has other rehab issues, and she has had very poor compliance with medicines for her blood pressure and her sugars, and so on.

So all these things kind of added up to make the surgery a little bit more complicated because she (the patient) has worse disease inside, and then after the surgery, the doctors and nurses have to take care of all these issues.

The patient's body has to recover from the trauma of the surgery.

All these complications the patient had, was the main reason the Deputy Chief cardiothoracic surgeon didn't want to partake in the surgery. He was definitely running away from responsibilities.

With his rank in the hospital, he is supposed to be the next in line after the Chief surgeon, in mobilizing the other cardiothoracic surgeons for surgeries, and also encouraging them.

But with this selfish act of his, what do you think the other doctors that look up to him might do? They would definitely follow in his steps.

As for Chen Lihua, she wasn't finding the surgery funny. She kept asking for clamps and other equipment while performing the surgery.

And she was sweating so much that the nurse by her side, had to be wiping her sweat every five minutes.

"It's getting stuffy here, put on some soothing music," Chen Lihua said, to no one in particular.

Her requests were granted within a minute.

This soothing music was able to make Chen Lihua relax her shoulders.

She has been in this surgery for a few hours now, and she was already getting tired.

This surgery was really taking a toll on her because the nurse didn't give her a detailed description of the patient's health.

Just into the surgery, she began to discover how complicated the surgery actually was because of the patient's health issues, and this caused her to be extra careful.

She was a bit angry because of this surgery because the patient's life lied in her hands. And if something wrong should happen during this surgery, then all the blame will be put on her head. She had already accumulated lots of enemies from her department, so they would use the issue against her, so she has to be extra careful.

So this patient's operation was a little more complicated than usual because of her age and tissues. Her tissues were very frail and tore easily, which made her have a lot of problems with bleeding.

Afterward, exposure of the valve inside her heart was also tricky. Still, Chen Lihua and the doctor assisting her were able to see it, and also managed to fix her own heart valve which again was best for her, so she did not need to have a replaced valve.

A few hours later, the precarious surgery, came to an end. An echocardiogram was done to ensure that the patient's heart valve was no longer leaking and that her heart function was restored back to normal, which was good.