A 53-year-old Italian musician named Dagmar Turner undergoes an operation for her brain tumour in Rome on Thursday.
Interestingly, while enduring the life-threatening nine-hour surgery, she plays her saxophone to fill those long, excruciating times.
The surgery takes place at Paideia International Hospital. The hospital’s brain surgeon, Dr Christian Brogna, is an expert in operating on patients while they are conscious.
According to Mayo Clinic, awake brain surgery or better known as a craniotomy, is a type of surgery performed on the brain while the patient is awake and alert of their surroundings. A craniotomy is a procedure commonly used to treat patients with brain tumours or epileptic seizures.
A similar case happened a few years ago when a patient played the violin in London. A King’s College Hospital patient played the instrument while the surgeons operated on their tumour removal. It was to ensure parts of the patient’s brain that control hand movements and coordination were safe from damage.
The Italian patient plays the saxophone to the end of her long nine-hour brain tumour surgery. Thankfully, the operation is a success. The patient discharges from the hospital on Thursday morning.
Brogna expresses, “To conduct surgery on such a young patient is strenuous. With the complex growth of the tumour around the patient’s brain, the surgery was initially impossible to make happen.”
The doctor adds that the complexity of the procedure heightened due to the musician being a lefty.
Source: ASTRO AWANI, BBC News, Mayo Clinic