brain is going to come back online and what brain is damaged. it all looks pretty bad. the brain has no place to swell. and i ll take you inside my operating room to show you the surgery that gabby had, removing half of her skull. that bone right out of there. it brings your best minds and their brightest ideas together. it helps the largest of companies seize opportunity like the smallest of startups. it s the network the intelligent, secure cisco network that lets your employees, partners, suppliers and customers innovate and share so you can unleash the power of your most valuable asset: your people. [ male announcer ] nature is unique.
one of the things that s really important is when you take this bone out, you want to make sure that you re protecting the brain underneath. lift that bone right out of there. and had is the area where the brain is actually allowed to swell. the brain is coming out of here. and this is key to reducing that swelling. and the last bit was just finding those areas of the brain that are clearly no longer alive. usually where the bullet came in and out and just clean that up. try to lower the chance of infection. the key thing is you don t chase it into the brainment we don t try to get every little piece of bullet out. even if they might be a source for infection in the future because this might damage good brain. cause more harm than good. absolutely. i m very, very pleased to hear the doctors report that she
actually works. i will show you as if i like congresswoman giffords were a patient of the doctor and his team. it sounds like a long day. it is a long day. everybody here has suffered a catastrophic injury and gets taylored therapy. the site of the injury in the brain is crucial. there is a tendency for a patient to forget one side of the body. just neglect it? just neglect it and if they re not using the weak side, you forget it. these cords are actually attached to my muscles in my legs. it s actually predicting which muscle it should be using and it s giving stimulation to that muscle. the brain usually sends a signal to the muscle, but the machine sends it s own signal and that
trouble in this case is bleeding uncontrolably. so if that bullet cut a major artery, that s hard to clean up that kind of with that kind of trouble. and fortunately here that was not the case. and then of course the brain swelling we worry about. and, again, something we can t really control but we can try and at least lessen the impact of and that s where we take off the bone fragment that s are there and maybe even a little bit more. that s where judgment comes in. it s a judgment call that trauma neurosurgeons are forced to make. a through and through bullet injury causes direct damage to the brain much it s the secondary damage due to swelling where you try to minimize the risk. the simple things they can do in the operating room, simply lifting the head of the bed up can reduce the swelling in the head. insert certain medications to shrink the brain. that can help as well. also, as they did in congressman giffords case, they can remove part of the bone here to decrease that s
the brain, unlike other organs of the brain, if it starts to swell, it really has nowhere to go. it can only go down wards and that is a hernation. you make holes like that one and giving access to the brain here and one over here which is just behind the eye. this is a pretty classic place where you make a hole and try to remove a large chunk of bone. that s the first part. and the second part is simply to try and connect the holes. you want to get as much bone off here as possible so that the brain has the maximum area to sort of swell. it is getting nice and hot. the key is to protect the brain underneath as well. and this is the last cut now we re making.