By Birgit Buerkner
The banana got it bad: serious stab wound in the chest! The peppers aren’t doing well either: a brain aneurysm is about to burst. And the walnut requires precise intervention: there is a tumor in the tissue.
Now the rescuers have to go, medical students in their last year of training, Berlin’s doctors of tomorrow. They practice surgical procedures on fruit and vegetables at the Vivantes Clinic in Friedrichshain.
Prof. Dag Moskopp, Director of the Clinic for Neurosurgery, prepares students for everyday practice Photo: Stefanie Herbst
Prof. Dag Moskopp (66), Director of the Clinic for Neurosurgery, tears the tomatoes from the eyes of young vegetables from the university with his unique practical seminar – three times a year on a voluntary basis, so that something gets into their bulbs.
The chief physician please in the OPst!
“Some basic medical activities are not trained during the course,” says Moskopp. “This is also not possible in humans for all concerns, which is why we operate on substitute objects for training purposes in the course.”
Preparations are selected that have properties similar to those of human body tissue, rather than those of animals.
The operated banana Photo: Stefanie Herbst
Student Ruqoyah (23) uses tweezers, a needle in a needle holder and scissors to carefully sew up the cut tissue of the banana and closes the wound with a so-called Donati suture with forward and back stitches. “It’s difficult to control the needle,” she says. Moskopp explains: “It works better if you hold the needle at a 120-degree angle…”
Sheriff (32) looks through the microscope inside a pepper. With a pair of pliers, he wraps a titanium clip around a seed that is hanging from the pulp. The aneurysm – the bulge in the vessel – is clamped off! Moskopp: “You must not be excited, you must guide your hand calmly.”
The field of view of the microscope with the sliced pepper is transferred to monitors. In the vegetable, the students practice clamping off a dangerous cerebral vasculature, an aneurysm Photo: Stefanie Herbst
Katharina (24) grinds a walnut with a diamond cutter at 70,000 revolutions per minute. The shell is intended to simulate the human skull, the nut skin the meninges. “It’s about opening the shell without damaging the walnut,” says Moskopp. Katharina adds: “You have to be careful not to slip.”
Well, increased difficulty: milling open a raw egg. Its shell is as thin as a newborn’s skull…
Katharina grinds a hole in the raw egg with a high-speed milling machine Photo: Stefanie Herbst
It takes most participants ten to twenty minutes to master each step.
And this shows once again: fruit and vegetables make you smart (doctors-to-be) and healthy (future patients).