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[Marks_Mistress]

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head Trivia | Air Date: 09/25/2005
RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD

Joe's Operation
All of our interns rally around Joe, the bartender from across the street, as he undergoes a Standstill Operation to clip a brain aneurysm.

Joe passes out in the bar because his aneurysm is slowly bleeding into his brain.
An aneurysm is a weakness in the wall of the artery that causes ballooning.
Joe's aneurysm is in the basilar artery, one of the trickiest places to clip an aneurysm, because no blood can flow to the brain while they do it. In order to stop the blood, they stop the heart. So, in essence, they kill Joe during the surgery only to revive him after they have clipped the artery. If they take too long, his brain will suffer damage from oxygen deprivation and will be damaged permanently.
During surgery, they hook Joe up to a bypass machine through his femoral artery.
To keep Joe's body viable once they've stopped the blood flow they freeze it, keeping it at a chilly 15 degrees Celsius. Or as we laypeople say - really, really, really cold.
For more information about cerebral aneurysms go to www.ninds.nih.gov/aneurysm.

Twin-Twin Transfusion Syndrome or TTTS
Meredith works with Dr. Addison Montgomery-Shepherd, a world renowned fetal surgeon, on the Twin-Twin Transfusion Syndrome case.
Some identical twins share a placenta. TTTS happens when identical twins share a placenta that has abnormal blood vessels which join one twin to the other and one twin assumes responsibility for pumping the blood for both twins. They call this twin the donor or pump twin
When severe, this condition endangers the lives of both twins. To lessen the burden on the heart, the pump twin begins to divert blood from its own organs and its kidneys begin to fail. The recipient twin becomes engorged with too much blood. One twin has too little amniotic fluid, the other too much. Either condition can be fatal.
The ground breaking fetal surgery performed by Addison has only been performed since the mid-nineties. It's the only treatment of TTTS which addresses the suspected root cause of the syndrome.
During surgery Addison uses a laser to close off the blood vessels which connect the twins. If successful, each twin effectively has its own placenta after the procedure.
In mild cases there are treatment options other than fetal surgery, which begin with bed rest and dietary supplements for the mother.
Twin-Twin Transfusion Syndrome is not a genetic or inherited condition and it isn't caused by anything the mother did or didn't do before or during pregnancy.