Last month, a Florida musician played the guitar during surgery, allowing a team of medical professionals to remove a brain tumor without compromising his dexterity.
The so-called “awake craniotomy”
Christian Nolen He had a frightening experience at a music concert last year. In an instant, Mr. Nolen could no longer move his upper body from the waist down and was unable to play his guitar. “I couldn't move his arm,” he later said. “My face started to drag.”
Doctors at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine quickly discovered that Nolen had a tumor known as a glioma in the right frontal lobe of her brain. In December, just 10 days after her diagnosis, Nolen was driven to surgery to remove the glioma.
As with any standard surgery, the anesthesiologist put Nolen to sleep at the beginning and end of the two-hour surgery. But on the way they woke him up and removed his shoes.
breathing tubeI put down my guitar.
Nolen later recalled how he felt when he woke up in the operating room. “It was very overwhelming to look at everything around me and fight my natural reaction to sit back,” he explained. “I just had to breathe and stay calm.
Although still battling the effects of the drugs he had been administered, he managed to sing some of his songs.
favorite band, System of a Down and Deftones. “This is wild,” he said at one point.
Dr. Ricardo Comotar, head of neurosurgery at Sylvester University, said that while it may sound strange to wake up a patient during surgery, it's actually a fairly common practice in his office. Komotar argued that it is not only useful for post-surgery recovery, but is also important for maintaining a patient's brain function during surgery. “By having the patient sit up and play the guitar while the tumor is removed, we can be as aggressive as possible while still maintaining the patient's quality of life and manual dexterity,” he says. explained.
Toward the end of the “awakening” portion of Nolen's surgery, Komotar said that Nolen's hand was in “decay” because “the tumor had touched and was in contact with the part of the brain that controls hand movement.” He even said he was starting to show signs. Despite the temporary loss of function, Komotar and other medical staff were able to remove “the entire tumor” without permanently affecting function.
While Nolen and his doctors are awaiting the results of pathology tests regarding the tumor, Nolen has resumed most of his normal daily activities, including going to the gym and, of course, strumming his guitar.
”[To] “Being active again…it's a big part of my life,” he said, adding, “It's been a pretty amazing recovery.”
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