Join Professor Roger Kneebone from Imperial’s Department of Surgery and Cancer, and over 100 clinicians, researchers and medical students as they programme an evening of surgical surprises, interactive delights and drama from the operating theatre at the Science Museum as part of its series of popular Lates events for adult audiences.
In the month for hearts to be won or broken, with Valentine’s Day and the leap-day in quick succession, head to the Heart Zone to meet our world-leading experts and explore the medicine behind real-life broken hearts. What actually happens to a patient having a heart attack? Our full-scale simulated angiography suite helps you find out.
In the Surgery Zone you’ll get to watch two different types of operation that happen every day in a hospital near you. If you fancy yourself as a keyhole surgeon, you can test your skills on our state-of-the-art simulator. Look into the future with world-renowned surgeon Lord Ara Darzi as he talks about Imperial technologies on the surgical horizon. You can also step back in time to see a surgical team recreate an operation from 1983, with a surgeon, anaesthetist and theatre sister who worked together at the time. See some of the Museum’s historic anaesthetic machines and talk to experts who used them.
Ever wondered what skills you need to be a surgeon? Or a London cabbie, a magician or a bootmaker? Take a trip to the Expert Zone to discover surprising links between expertise from inside and outside the operating theatre:
- Find out how the Craft of being a surgeon is linked to ancient arts like tailoring and bootmaking, and compare the skills of sewing together intestines with the art of creating bespoke suits and hand-made shoes.
- Surgery involves thinking on your feet, Performing under pressure and working with all kinds of patients – even when they’re intoxicated. Compare a plastic surgeon at work with a master illusionist working his audience. Hold onto your wallets…
- From pictures and diagrams to the uncertainties of real life – maybe learning human anatomy isn’t so different from how taxi drivers find their way round London (“The Knowledge”). In Fitting it all together pit your wits against a London cabbie while checking out our computerized anatomy table.
- Gaining surgical skill needs years of practice makes perfect. Sounds like learning a musical instrument? Chat to the Liam Noble / Dave Wickens jazz duo, who’ll give insights into the art of creativity – then make your own connections with surgery.
- Teaching your fingers to see: haptics – the science of touch – is something that surgeons can’t do without. Haptic technology is teaching surgeons to practice complex procedures without the need for real patients. Try it yourself, reach out and touch a world that doesn’t exist.