THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 22, 1995 TAG: 9504210099
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY BONKO, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 124 lines
WHEN YOU WATCH ``The Operation'' on The Learning Channel, you are elbow to elbow with surgeons in starched masks and gowns who perform open-heart surgery, remove gall bladders, repair tears in the abdominal wall and reverse vasectomies with the help of high-powered microscopes.
This isn't ``ER'' or ``Chicago Hope.''
This isn't actors pretending to stop a heart while they do coronary bypass surgery.
``The Operation,'' seen on TLC Saturdays at 10 p.m. and again at 1 a.m., is the real thing. Life and death television. The show's second full season on cable began earlier this month.
Hear that?
It's the sound of stainless-steel guillotine shears slicing off a rib to make it easier for surgeons to remove a kidney about to be transplanted from son to father.
Crack!
The noise of sharp steel snapping bone is not unlike a rifle shot.
See that?
It's the kidney bathed in slushy ice only moments before surgeons in Los
Angeles who are brothers - twin brothers, at that - hook up the organ inside the body of a very sick man named Clifford Stahl of Visalia, Calif.
It's a gift from his 27-year-old son.
Tonight on ``The Operation,'' co-producers Bill and Colette Hayes of Advanced Medical Productions Inc. in Durham, N.C., take their cameras inside an operating room at the University of Virginia Health Science Center in Charlottesville. Fifteen-year-old gymnast Mary Wilcher of Charleston, W.Va., is having surgery to stabilize vertebrae she injured in an accident.
On ``The Operation,'' the camera's eye never blinks. It sees everything, and therefore the viewer sees everything, from the scalpel's first clean slice to the tidy suturing at operation's end.
The microphone eavesdrops on every conversation in the operating room. Listen to the surgeon as play-by-play announcer:
``We're through the skin and fat.''
The doctors Rafael and Robert Mendez see it as a mini-miracle when the transplanted kidney comes to life, rosy and flushed with blood, in Clifford Stahl's body.
``We've got a beautiful kidney.''
The diseased kidneys stay where they are.
``They are essentially dead,'' the surgeons said. ``Balls of scar tissue.''
``The Operation'' is not for everyone - not for the squeamish, certainly. During the kidney transplant, the Mendez brothers gave viewers a little operating room bonus.
They showed to the camera an artery almost closed by yellow plaque.
Meet cholesterol, face to face.
Meet the devil in your arteries.
The unseen enemy is unseen no longer.
How yucky it looks.
``Think about this picture the next time you're tempted to order an ice cream cone,'' said one of the brothers.
``The Operation'' takes its audience deep into the body machine, into the brain, heart, spine, even the tube that transports sperm.
The scenes are graphic, admitted Bill Hayes in a telephone interview from Durham. ``Some viewers can't handle the blood and guts. Some watch with just one eye open.''
But they watch. And they marvel at what Hayes' three operating-room cameras show them. This is not a television show for doctors and nurses only.
This is for you and me, said Hayes.
He insists the doctors talk in words and phrases that everyone will understand. Donna Willis, an internist and researcher at Johns Hopkins University, is aboard as host and guide. She's an old pro on television, working from time to time on ``Today.''
Hayes sees to it that every episode of ``The Operation'' is a little drama with a beginning, middle and end. You meet the patients, get to know them, sweat out the operations with their relatives, feel good when the surgeons say all has gone well.
Willis sets it all in motion.
``Join us for a story about the power of medicine.''
Is TLC really going to show a tubal ligation reversal, step by step?
You bet. The patient is 37-year-old Deborah Martinez.
Is TLC really going to show, close up, how surgeons repair a hernia that is giving a police officer so much misery? You bet. Welcome to laparoscopic hernia surgery.
``The Operation,'' said Hayes, is produced to go boldly where no other prime-time series has gone before - deep into the brain and body.
``We're showing things that the average person knows very little about. We're making serious medicine available to millions of viewers. And we do it in plain English.''
Tonight on ``The Operation,'' Dr. John Jane in Charlottesville looks through a powerful microscope to put metal pins in Mary Wilcher's spine. They will stabilize the vetrebrae and give her the freedom to participate in ballet and ride horses.
The operation was completed weeks ago. How is Mary doing?
She is well, said Dr. Jane from Charlottesvile. No more gymnastics for Mary, however. But life still holds much for her.
Next week on ``The Operation,'' a surgeon in Baltimore removes a cancerous prostate gland using a new, improved, safer technique. Later on ``The Operation'' comes arthroscopic shoulder surgery and a procedure in which lasers burn away bloody fluid causing blurred vision.
The cameras never intrude, said Dr. Jane. ``I am very comfortable with them in the operating room. This is a nicely done series that is of great service to viewers.''
Yes, ``The Operation'' is hard to watch at first. But don't give up at the first sight of blood threatening to fill up a body cavity or a scalpel neatly slicing flesh. Stick with it. Soon, the shock fades and you become a spectator who is hooked, one who can't wait for the next step in the surgery as Hayes' cameras hover just six inches above the incision.
``Our show really engages people,'' said Hayes. ``Almost everyone will be operated on sooner or later in life. Most people don't know what happens to them after the anesthesia is administered. We show you what happens.''
And what often happens, said the brothers Mendez in Los Angeles, is what happened when they put Jeff Stahl's healthy young kidney inside his father's body.
``A great moment.'' Father and son are doing fine, thank you.
``The Operation'' beats anything I've seen George Clooney pull off on ``ER.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Johns Hopkins University
Each Saturday on The Learning Channell, "The Operation" shows
surgeons at work. It's not for the squeamish.
by CNB