Study Tour | Small Steps Accumulate to a Thousand Mile

Foreword:

People are often surprised by the instant brightness of flowers of success. Whereas before that, its buds are soaked through tears of struggle and poured over blood rain of sacrifice.

Bing Xin

First of all, I am very grateful to Gloryren. It is your matching work that provided me with such a wonderful and rare trip to Germany. At the same time, I am also very grateful to the leaders of the Jiangmen People's Hospital and the Director and colleagues of the Second Division of Orthopedics Department for their strong support. It was my honor to be a visiting scholar of spine surgery at Hoctaunus Kliniken.

From October to December 2018, I spent 84 enjoyable and fruitful study days in Spine Surgery Department at this hospital.

First time to go abroad

Excited and concerned

I set off from China a day earlier as planned before. I took a non-stop plane of Lufthansa from Hongkong International Airport and after 12 hours long journey, I finally arrived in Frankfurt.

Because it was the first time that I went abroad, I felt excited and concerned at the same time. Gloryren had booked rather nice accommodation for me. What was more touching was that Prof. Daniel Rosenthal picked me up at the airport and sent me to my accommodation, which provided me with great convenience.

The nice accommodation Gloryren booked for me

Photo with Prof. Rosenthal

Daniel Rosenthal is a visiting professor of our hospital and was in China two weeks ago. I spent a little time with him. As an international spine master, his passion and approachable presence made me feel at ease. He allayed my confusion and upset.

Frankfurt is 6 hours behind Beijing time, but I had no trouble with time difference. The public transport in Germany is very advanced and convenient. It covered every small village and suburb, but I still felt confused since I was strange here and didn’t speak German.

Public transport in Germany is very advanced and convenient

The next day, I smoothly arrived at Hoctaunus Kliniken with my host’s and google map’s guide.

Here I would like to say thank you to Gloryren. It arranged very comfortable and quiet accommodation for me. And it was located near the train station. The host happened to be from Sichuan, China. She had been living in Germany for over 20 years.

Hoctaunus Kliniken•Impression

Most advanced diagnosis, leading equipment and technology of surgery

Bad Homburg is a town of about 60,000 people. It is the largest town in the high Taunus district of Frankfurt. Hoctaunus Kliniken was newly moved here three years ago. The old buildings were about 2 kilometers away from the new buildings, but the old ones have been abandoned. They said that the renovation of the old hospital would be more expensive than the construction of a new hospital.

Hoctaunus Kliniken is a comprehensive hospital. The surgical department includes spine surgery, trauma, joints, urology, general surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, dentistry, otolaryngology, plastic surgery and so on.

Among them, spine surgery department focuses on conservative and surgical treatment of degenerative diseases of the spine, tumors, and trauma.

After diagnosed by doctors on the main campus, conservative treatments such as physical therapy and rehabilitation exercises are mostly arranged on the outer campus. The main campus mainly performs nerve blocks of lumbar vertebrae under CT positioning and spinal angiography . There are about four to six spine operations every day. Basically, all spinal surgery adopts minimally invasive approach, which is the mainstream of the hospital.

The hospital adopts most advanced diagnostic approaches, surgical equipment and technology. The hospital also has a navigation and positioning system, intraoperative CT, which can provide accurate real-time control of the operation. Only a few hospitals in Germany have such equipment.

Translation in Chinese, published in 2004

Published in 2008

Daniel Rosenthal gave me two books about endoscopic approaches to the thoracic spine, of which he is the main editor.

Prof. Rosenthal maintains a world-leading level in the use of thoracoscopic techniques for the treatment of thoracic diseases. He has so far completed more than 1,000 cases of thoracic diseases.

Prof Rosenthal always told me that don’t operate surgery by looking at inspection images. Find out the causes of symptoms and do not operate preventive surgery.

Photo with Dr. Daniel Rosenthal

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