In order to monitor his brain functions while a brain tumor was removed, a 55-year-old man, a music teacher, underwent surgery while conscious and playing the guitar for 4 hours at the ISSSTE General Hospital “Aquiles Calles Ramírez” La Quarry, from Tepic, Nayarit.
During this time, the patient was playing the guitar and composing songs, which was adequate to understand the functionality of creative stimuli in the brain at a neurological level.
This surgery was carried out for the first time in the state and was a success by the neurosurgeon Celia Teresa de Jesús Álvarez Gamiño, the ISSSTE reported in the entity.
The specialist said that the brain tumor removed from the patient was diffuse.
“In other words, its limits cannot be recognized when observed microscopically and it was not possible to define whether the cells were benign or malignant, so it was decided that the best way to carry out the resection was to do it while the patient remained awake, in such a way that all brain functions could be monitored in real time.”
In the first 40 minutes, they made the cuts in the head to access the tumor, which was removed while the main functions such as language, hearing, facial recognition and emotions were mapped.
Carrying out this operation with the patient anesthetized would have made it impossible to know the effects on their neurological functions, explained the neurosurgeon, Celia Teresa de Jesús Álvarez.
“The manipulation of the brain is not painful, the patient will be returning to work in approximately 2 weeks; and doctors, residents, surgical nursing staff and psychologists participated in his surgery, who were aware of precisely monitoring the emotional and brain control areas of the beneficiary.”
Reference-aristeguinoticias.com
