Page 21 - EOE NEWSLETTER-10-updated

ΣΥΝΈΝΤΈΥΞΗ
Tεύχος 10 | Μάρτιος - Απρίλιος 2021
What is the feedback of your students/ trainees?
I always use drawings (not just mine, but also those of other – much better- sketchers)
to teach my students both anatomy and surgery because I believe that a graphical illustration can demonstrate more than a word. And they approve of it, often collecting sketches to fix the concept. I know some of them still keep some crumpled sheets ...on the fridge. In my atlas of Surgical Anatomy, I avoid the use of long descriptions, preferring sequences of drawings. In the introduction, I wrote: "Don't tell me, show me!".
Leonardo da Vinci, is the most famous scientist-artist, pioneer in anatomy - he foresaw the future of surgery, in times where the boundaries of sciences were blurred. As a great artist and a gifted surgeon of the new era, how do you foresee the future of surgery?
The comparison with Leonardo is out of line. Nevertheless, in the past, the fathers of Modern Human Anatomy realized that drawing is crucial to fix a discovery, to describe an anatomical structure: in the frontispiece of "De Humani Corporis Fabrica - 1543" Andrea Vesalius (in Padova!) shows him during a dissection. Right next to the surgical armamentarium, there is a pen and an ink-well! Vesalius created detailed illustrations of anatomy for students: he demonstrated that it's mandatory to perform a drawing of the organs to learn anatomy. Drawing is a (unique) teaching tool!
Drawings have been demonstrated to be more functional compared to pictures in describing human organs, in explaining their functions, in showing surgical details. If you perform a test searching for a specific surgical anatomical topic on Google, such as the UPJ obstruction, the amount of drawings is unbelievably higher in comparison with pictures because some details are so difficult to capture clearly in a photo.
You were honored with the special Award "Scientist- Artist of 2019" during 4th Annual International Prostate Cancer & Urologic Oncology Symposium 2019 The Mount Sinai Hospital, New York – USA. Do you know if a similar award has been given again?
I don't know, but it was a special gift from my friend Ash Tewari: he also draws his surgical interventions and during our congresses
we often (friendly) compete in reproducing anatomical details. ...he always wins!
Robots in surgery and pencil in painting...
I think surgery is a form of art, as often happens in about all the jobs if you use
your passion as fuel. Surgical gestures, or strokes, to use an art metaphor, on a human being should be performed with the same meticulous attention and precision as when you paint a human body. Robots allow us
to "brush" internal organs, reducing the destructive impact of a mutilation, preferring a limited precise and fine dissection instead. In this my personal vision, operating and painting are not so far away. Knife and pencil are about identical tools for surgeon.
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