Cibola surgical ward sees 3-4 surgeries a day

By Jim Tiffin
Staff Writer

Melody Lopez, ORT prepares a tray of instruments Wednesday in the operating room at Cibola General Hospital. (Photo by Jerry Wilson/Independent)

GRANTS — Emergency surgeries such as gunshot wounds and stabbings are the only things that interrupt the pattern of three to four surgeries a day, Monday through Friday, at Cibola General Hospital, said Ceferina Brinquis, RN, BSN, CNOR, the surgical department supervisor.

The five nurses and medical technicians working in the department assist doctors in the three surgical rooms and the recovery room. One of those three rooms is a major surgical room where large, open cases are done.

An open case is where the surgeon has to cut on the body to do the surgery, rather than using a much smaller and less invasive laporoscope. A laporoscope is a tube with a camera at its end that is used to explore inside the body. What the camera sees can be recorded on videotape, she said.

The types of procedures that are performed run the gamut from smaller surgeries like an exploratory laporoscopy to appendectomies, C-sections, colon resections and amputations.

"The amputations are all diabetes-related," she said.

Diabetics lose circulation in their lower limbs requiring the lower leg to be amputated.

The past two weeks have been especially busy for surgical staff members. They have assisted in 43 surgeries, and many of those were C-sections.

A local dentist, Dr. Marcellus Gladney, does pediatric dental surgery there as well, Brinquis said.

Local doctors who perform surgeries at the hospital are Dr. Karl Gutierrez, Dr. Ronald Lujan, Dr. Arnold Valdivia and Dr. Vinu Alexander.

One of the state-of-the-art pieces of medical equipment used in surgeries is called an ultracision harmonic generator, commonly called an harmonic scalpel.

The scalpel is not sharp like a knife, but it cuts. The scalpel vibrates so fast that it cuts tissue cleanly but also controls bleeding.

It uses heat to coagulate the blood keeping the surgical site clear so the surgeon can see what he is doing. It also helps reduce blood loss.

Brinquis is from Batangas, Philippines and has worked at CGH since 1985. Between 1985 and 1992, she went back and forth to the Philippines and the hospital several times, but finally ended up staying here permanently in 1992.

For decades the number one export of the Philippines has been doctors and nurses and for good reason, she said.

"Our monthly salary there is equal to one day here," she said.

— To contact reporter Jim Tiffin call 287-2197 or e-mail: jtiffin@blackmesa-isp.net.