A journey into the body at the Deutsches Museum

Everything is new at the Deutsches Museum! This was the claim with which exhibitions ranging from atomic physics to robotics opened for all museumgoers in summer 2022 in the completely renovated part of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. The "health" exhibition is one of 19 new areas designed from scratch, with a catheterization laboratory as its central exhibit.

Straightaway you can see that this exhibit is up close and personal: A gigantic model of a body fills the room – you can wander into the head space, marvel at the stylized rib cage framework suspended from the ceiling, and finish up at the five-meter-high foot at the end of the hall. The tour takes visitors from the teeth, eyes, and ears through the cardiovascular system to the joints. The younger explorers follow Milla the Owl on the children's trail.

The great experts of medical history are nowhere to be seen. Instead, we hear interviews with real patients recounting what life is like with a cochlea implant or with a prosthetic leg. The topics cover everything that might affect the visitors personally: You can learn about eye diseases such as cataracts, find out how arteriosclerosis develops, or how vector vaccines work. Interactive stations test your skill at sewing a surgical seam.

The exhibits contributed by Siemens Healthineers represent significant highlights on the tour: There is an OR table equipped with an ARTIS pheno angiography system, which was developed for use in minimally invasive surgery and interventional cardiology. Visitors experience a modern catheterization laboratory through simulation and can experience how stent placement is controlled on a patient model.

In the central part of the exhibition, visitors can experience cases particularly close up: Here, we see real stories of patients with serious diseases shown on a digital examination table.

 "Ms Eicke" is one such patient. Her name is fictitious, but her story all the more real: An anomaly was discovered in her lung during screening. As a smoker, she belongs to a risk group for malignant changes in the lung. And, in fact, a more thorough examination at the Thorax Clinic at Heidelberg University Hospital showed an adenocarcinoma at an early stage.

On an interactive table, the visitors can hear the story of Ms Eicke, view the clinical images, and check their assessment of the required therapy against reality. In real life, the story of Ms Eicke had a happy ending. The patient already quit smoking during follow-up monitoring of the pulmonary nodule and no residue or relapse was found in the CT aftercare. Ms Eicke was lucky that her lung cancer was picked up so early and could be completely surgically removed. She is not restricted in her normal life after one of five pulmonary lobes had been removed. In reality, only 21 percent of women and 15 percent of men have a successful outcome after this diagnosis¹.

The general director of the Deutsches Museum, Wolfgang M. Heckl, is grateful that contact with top physicians and manufacturers was possible: "Siemens Healthineers enables visitors to the Deutsches Museum to experience the latest medical technology firsthand."