
A musician plays the violin during brain surgery - bookofjoe
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/watch-musician-play-violin-during-brain-surgery-180974246/
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lurquer
The article doesnt mention it, but the surgeon also had a brain tumour.
Concerned about his fine motor skills, he had his tumor operated on WHILe he
was performing brain surgery on the violinist. Amazingly, HIS surgeon was
operating on the violinst's docctor while himself having a tumour removed.

I don't know why they leave out details like this in these dumbed-down
articles. It was really an extraordinary operation.

------
ogig
My partner used to watch Grey's Anatomy and this procedure was the main plot
in one chapter. I could not believe this could be real so I googled it and
confirmed to my surprise it was a real thing.

Recently I watched a local show about a bank robbery. The secure chamber was
constructed beneath a river. If alarms triggered the chamber would flood.
Again, I could not believe somebody could engineer that. I was wrong.

This pattern repeats. Certainly fiction is bounded by reality.

~~~
mamon
As Mark Twain once said: "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."

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fao_
As a musician this would be _incredibly_ difficult, because (at least for me,
but I've noticed it to be common among (and not to toot my own horn) high-
skill players) music is intractably linked with the movement produced from the
rest of my body. Not being able to express that while playing would be
frustrating to say the least!

~~~
criddell
I don't think the quality of playing was as important as just the fact that
the person was able to continue playing.

~~~
fao_
It's not about the quality of the playing, the point is it's completely
automatic!

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cipherboy
Roger Frisch, one of our former associate CMs with the Minnesota Orchestra
also did something similar a while back:

[https://www.classicfm.com/discover-
music/instruments/violin/...](https://www.classicfm.com/discover-
music/instruments/violin/roger-frisch-plays-deep-brain-stimulation-surgery/)

Same idea, different medical reason.

(And oddly, not mentioned in this article).

------
overcast
Isn't this standard practice for all brain surgery? Patient kept awake and
active for feedback.

~~~
bookofjoe
Retired neurosurgical anesthesiologist here.

No, this is not standard practice for all brain surgery. Feedback from a
conscious patient is not useful in most cases of tumor resection, nor is it
employed in neurovascular procedures such as cerebral aneurysm clipping.

Awake craniotomy is used in brain tumor resection when the mass encroaches on
or borders crucial motor areas of the cerebral cortex, as was the case in the
OP.

A more frequent use case for this technique is in patients with intractable
seizure disorders in whom partial temporal lobe resection is planned. Mapping
the hyperactive areas with electrical stimulation applied by the neurosurgeon
directly to brain tissue delineates pathological loci while minimizing
resection of unaffected contiguous areas.

A personal note: I very much enjoyed providing anesthesia for awake
craniotomies. Everything about them required me to be at the very top of my
game every second. For my preoperative visit on the evening before the
procedure, to take a history and perform a physical examination, I made
certain to make it clear to the patient and their family that I had all the
time in the world, so that by the time I was finished, they were clear as to
exactly what would happen, down to the questions I would be asking them when I
woke them up from anesthesia with the top of their skull in a sterile tray and
their brain exposed.

There is an art to making someone about to undergo such a formidable procedure
comfortable and able to get some sleep the night before surgery.

I gave anesthesia for awake craniotomies perhaps 50-100 times over my 38 years
of practice, the youngest patients being in their early teens.

~~~
tomcam
This is why I love HN. Also his blog is endlessly fascinating:
[https://www.bookofjoe.com/](https://www.bookofjoe.com/)

