{"id":135,"date":"2007-04-02T07:28:38","date_gmt":"2007-04-02T07:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2007\/04\/02\/rick-sasso-%e2%80%9982-surgical-pioneer\/"},"modified":"2007-04-02T07:28:38","modified_gmt":"2007-04-02T07:28:38","slug":"rick-sasso-82-surgical-pioneer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2007\/04\/02\/rick-sasso-82-surgical-pioneer\/","title":{"rendered":"Rick Sasso \u201982: Surgical Pioneer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Amidon<\/span><\/i> \u2014 Like most people, I have bad days;<\/span> days when the creative engine doesn\u2019t fire, when I type responses to critical emails I never send, and struggle to put a happy face on the public image of the college. Fortunately, that doesn\u2019t happen very often.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I get in one of those ruts, I try to remember why I\u2019m here and why I\u2019ve spent my life in service to the college \u2014 the students and alumni who make Wabash truly special.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span> After a crazy first three weeks of March, I had one of those professional life preservers thrown my way. Steve Charles, the amazingly talented editor of Wabash Magazine<\/i><\/a><\/span>, was talking with a colleague about an alumnus who will be featured in the forthcoming June issue. They were frustrated because they had no good photos to illustrate the story of groundbreaking surgeon Rick Sasso \u201982<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I shouted across the hall, \u201cSteve, call his office and see if I can get into the operating room and photograph him in action.\u201d I didn\u2019t think Steve would call my bluff.<\/span><\/p>\n

A week later I arrived at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis, donned surgical scrubs, and trotted with camera into an orthopedic center operating room a little after 6 a.m. Dr. Sasso explained what he would be doing, using x-rays and MRI films to make it simpler for me to understand. It became clear from that moment that I would be his student and he would teach me every step of an extremely complicated spinal surgery.<\/span><\/p>\n

To back up a bit, Dr. Sasso is being profiled because of his state-of-the-art spine surgery techniques and leadership of the Indiana Spine Group<\/a>. He was the first surgeon in the U.S. to perform artificial disc replacement surgery in both the cervical and lumbar regions of the spine. He owns a dozen patents for surgical techniques and the tools to accomplish his work.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the day I shadowed and photographed him, he performed a tricky surgery on a middle-aged woman suffering from spinal stenosis. Her spine was curved in such a way that it caused the spinal canal to narrow and put pressure on the spinal nerve. The debilitating condition left her limbs numb or completely useless.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stenosis can be seen in young people, but mostly affects people over the age of 50. With age, the ligaments around the spine thicken, bones and joints enlarge, and the spinal cord is slowly pinched.<\/span><\/p>\n

For two hours and 23 minutes, Dr. Sasso led an eight-member team that effectively corrected the problem in a procedure known as a laminectomy. Pieces of bone and tissue were removed and the patient\u2019s once-flattened, compressed spinal cord suddenly looked like a happy, puffy balloon<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>Throughout the process, Dr. Sasso invited me to the operating table to both see what he was doing and document it in photos. As he did so, he talked about the tools and hardware he\u2019s helped develop that allow for such good results \u2014 shorter and safer operations with long-term, success.<\/span><\/p>\n

On this day, he used a device called the VERTEX Reconstruction System<\/a>. If you didn\u2019t know better, you\u2019d think one of his surgical assistants had raided the hardware section at Stevenson\u2019s Ace Hardware. Actually, the device is a carefully constructed and versatile system of screws, hooks, and rods that more thoroughly and safely eliminates the pressure on the spinal cord.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>Lest people think I\u2019ve gone from humanist to biologist, the real point here is the doctor himself. From the moment Dr. Sasso greeted me to the final handshake, it felt like I was hanging out with a long lost friend. He was gentle with my idiotic questions and explained things in great detail at an intellectual pace I could handle.<\/span><\/p>\n

The really cool thing about Dr. Sasso is that he constantly questions everything. When faced with \u201cthat can\u2019t be done,\u201d he sets out to discover or invent solutions to long-standing problems. And in my case on that day, he was teacher, surgeon, and pioneer in a refreshingly ego-free manner.<\/span><\/p>\n

Plaques and awards do not hang in his office; a few dozen pictures of his former patients living healthy lives provide all the satisfaction he needs. (Dr. Sasso is pictured above with Angela Allsup, who received an artificial cervical disc three years ago.)<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Some might think observing spinal surgery is a long way from a professional perk, and they\u2019re probably right. But meeting the man behind the mask and scalpel was for me the very best possible professional pick-me-up, and provided yet another example of the way Wabash men are changing the world in very human ways.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read the full story about Dr. Rick Sasso’s life-saving, ground-breaking work in the next issue of<\/span><\/i> Wabash Magazine.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Amidon \u2014 Like most people, I have bad days; days when the creative engine doesn\u2019t fire, when I type responses to critical emails I never send, and struggle to put a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}