Famous Among Top Surgeons in the 90s

Staring at someone 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 department first. He would review the report in the inpatient department afterward.

Based on the patient's current situation, they needed to first check whether the CT showed acute brain hemorrhage and whether the volume of bleeding warranted immediate emergency surgery. If not, conservative treatment 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 Department.

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 departments famously at odds?"

Every hospital is the same—Cardiology and Cardiothoracic Surgery are constantly competing for cases. As he'd mentioned 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 same medications as Neurology. As for the physical therapies Neurology provided, to him as a surgeon, they were almost equivalent to placebo treatments or simple hot compresses, with minimal effect. Late-stage limb function training for patients belonged to the domain of professional rehabilitation departments, 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 development of interventional medication 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 treatments.

Originally, such procedures should have been performed by Cardiothoracic surgeons. The fundamental distinction between internal medicine and surgery lies in whether or not surgery is performed. However, breakthroughs in various scientific and technological advancements have led to the emergence of new types of surgical methods, blurring this line. Visionary scholars, both domestically and internationally, have predicted that in the future, there might no longer be a distinction between internal medicine 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 domestically 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 performed 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 medicine 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 numerous departments and intertwined, complex internal interests, the resistance would be substantial.

From the perspective of medical development, in the future, centers like Cardiac Centers, Renal Centers, and Hepatobiliary Centers—conducting medical care based on organs without differentiating between internal and surgical medicine—will likely become the trend. As a result, Guoxie's Hepatobiliary Surgery department has been aggressively proactive, directly suppressing the nascent Hepatology department during its inception. It can be imagined that once the New Surgical Building is completed and space becomes available, Guoxie will use Hepatobiliary Surgery as a basis to experiment with building this kind of comprehensive treatment center.