Bengaluru: It was a different scene at a Bengaluru hospital where a patient kept strumming his guitar as doctors performed a brain surgery on him.
The 32-year-old techie-turned-musician was seen playing the guitar during the seven-hour long surgery as doctors burned his brain to cure him from a condition called musician’s dystonia, a condition that cramped three fingers on his left hand.
Musician’s dystonia, also known as Musician’s cramp, is a neurological motor disorder characterised by involuntary, prolonged muscle contractions, which cause affected parts of the body to be twisted into abnormal postures. It occurs due to abnormal and involuntary flexion of muscles, because of rigorous use.
The disorder can affect a range of parts of the body including the neck, eyes, voice and hand. Usually, men are commonly affected by musician’s dystonia than women.
The youth played the guitar to help the doctors identify the troublesome areas in his brain.
The TOI quotes Dr Sharan Srinivasan, a stereotactic and functional neurosurgeon at Jain Institute of Movement Disorders and Stereotactic Neurosurgery as saying: “This is a surgery where the part of the brain triggering abnormal tremors is destroyed by burning. Before the surgery, a special frame was fixed to his head with four screws going deep into the skull following which an MRI was conducted.” These MRI images showed three coordinates of the target area in the brain (8-9cm deep, in this case) along with the entry point to the skull and the path to be followed during surgery.
“Based on these coordinates, a 14mm hole was drilled into the skull under local anaesthesia and a specialized electrode was passed into the brain following which it was stimulated to confirm the right location and prevent complications,” he said.
The youth has recovered now from the disorder and can move his fingers like before said he was amazed to see his fingers improve magically on the operation table itself, adding that by the end of the surgery, his fingers were 100% cured.
Within three days of surgery, he was able to walk out of the hospital and all set to play guitar again, the report added.
