Two emergency operations added drama during Harefield Hospital’s open day last week.
The urgent surgery gave about 250 visitors an extra insight into the pressures of life at the leading heart and lung centre.
The plan had been to make three theatres available to showcase cardiothoracic surgery to former and existing patients, the hospital’s neighbours and staff.
When events got under way at 10am one of the theatres was already in use by medics performing an emergency lung transplant.
This meant using only two theatres for the event, which was made up of a series of one-hour tours.
One of the later sessions was then curtailed when the theatre space was needed to cope with two further transplants and two other urgent operations.
Jackie Burbidge, service manager for theatres and anaesthetics at the Hill End Road hospital, said: “This was our fourth open day and it was definitely the most challenging.
“Fortunately, the staff were very responsive and flexible and we were able to cope with the emergencies and ensure the visits went ahead pretty much as planned.
“It was earmarked as a training day with no elective operations, so there would be plenty of staff on duty and lots of theatre capacity, which was just as well.
“We were able to cope with everything that got thrown at us – both the things that we were expecting and the things that came out of the blue.”
People who turned out for the open day, including sixth form students from Harefield Academy, were shown around a cardiac and a thoracic theatre with lifelike displays depicting their procedures, post-operative recovery, organ donation and transplantation.
Academy pupil Raychele Parker, 16, said: “I have always wanted to see what it was really like inside an operating theatre after seeing it on TV.”
Visitors included the UK’s longest-surviving heart transplant patient, John McCafferty, from Newport Pagnell, who had the operation in 1982.
