Man Plays Guitar During his Own Brain Surgery

A certain kind of brain surgery requires that the patient be awake.

19:27 16 July 2015

This means that the patient is not only seemingly conscious but is also able to interact with the surgeons and the medical team, talking intelligibly just to make sure that the vital areas or the brain are not injured during the surgery.

 

Awake brain surgery is now achievable through the use of latest methods of brain mapping and high technology anaesthetics.  The brain mapping method gives the doctors the exact map of the brain that they are working on, and use it to effectively remove the tumours located very near to critical brain areas that affect speech, motor function and memory.  The modern anaesthetics, on the other hand, keep the patient sedated but fully awake and articulate.

 

The surgical team can start with testing a patient by asking questions or asking him to perform some fine-motor activities as they apply electrical stimulation to the various parts of the brain that will be accessed to determine where the sensitive areas are situated. When this is done, the patient can then be fully sedated as the actual removal of the tumours will be done right.

 

One such awake brain surgery was done on Anthony Kullkamp Dias of Brazil who had to have a tumour extracted from his brain. On this type of procedure, Anthony has to be wide awake and interactive not just plain conscious so the doctors can be positive that they are not damaging the critical areas of his brain. If there is one activity that will make sure that Anthony is wide awake and responsive, it would be guitar playing, and so that is what he did.   Anthony, who is a banker by profession, he has been playing the guitar for over two decades. So he put on his own performance during his brain surgery.

 

CNN reported that the surgery was successfully completed, with about 90 percent of the tumour extracted.