A Florida musician was asked by his surgeons to play guitar while they operated on his brain in a stunning example of modern medical techniques.
Christian Nolen, a guitarist from the Miami-area, went under the knife in early January to remove a tumour on the right side of his frontal lobe that was affecting his motor control.
Nolen told local broadcaster WSVN Miami that he started noticing issues after being knocked around at a concert.
“I had lost feeling in my whole left side from the waist up. I wasn’t able to move my arm (and) my face began to drag,” he said.
Ultimately, Nolen was diagnosed with a glioma, a mass of cells that forms in the brain or spinal cord, and he had to undergo an awake craniotomy to remove the tumour. The surgery was performed at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami.
But why did Nolen have to be awake while in surgery? And why was he asked to play guitar?
Ricardo Komotar, the director of the brain tumour program at Sylvester, explained to Fox News that this process is actually designed to maximize patient safety.
“When a tumor is involving or near a critical part of the brain — something that controls the ability to speak or understand language or move — we want to do the surgery awake to continually monitor the patient, so you know if you start to violate normal brain functions,” Komotar said.
When a patient is unconscious during a brain operation, the surgeons aren’t able to get that same feedback.
“The surgeries actually become much more dangerous because you can take out a tumour that involves normal brain function and cause real harm without knowing it,” Komotar added.
In an interview with WSVN, Komotar added that having Nolen play guitar during the surgery allowed the medical team to be “as aggressive as possible” in removing the tumour, while still ensuring that they weren’t negatively impacting his dexterity in any way.
Nolen ended up playing several songs by the Deftones and System of a Down during the two-hour procedure.
“It was just out of this world, to wake up and have people actively working inside of your head. It’s kind of an insane feeling,” Nolen told WSVN.
During an awake craniotomy, the patient is initially put under full anesthesia when the operation begins. After the neurosurgeon cuts through the skull and reaches the area of the brain where the tumour is located, the sedation is “slowly lifted” to allow the patient to wake up and communicate with doctors, according to an explainer by the University of Miami.
Then, the medical team uses electrical currents to stimulate important areas of the brain used for speech and movement.
“Your neurosurgeon will ask you to talk, move, and follow commands. If the electric stimulation affects your ability to perform any of these tasks, then the surgeon knows to avoid the area and leave it intact because it is not affected by the tumor,” the University of Miami writes.
Once the tumour is removed, the patient is sedated again while the surgeons wrap up the operation.
Nolen said he was shocked when his doctors asked him to play guitar during the surgery but he couldn’t miss out on the opportunity.
“I felt like it was such a unique experience that I couldn’t pass up — especially with my motor skills being on the line,” Nolen told Fox. “The risk of being sedated for the entire procedure outweighed any fear or anxieties around the procedure itself.”
Nolen’s operation was a success and he was discharged a day after the surgery to continue his recovery at home.
“Being able to go to the gym and be active again, which is a big part of my life, it’s been very amazing,” he said.
The guitar-playing ended up being extremely useful during the surgery. Komotar said that doctors noticed Nolen’s “hand function started to decline” as surgeons were removing the back of the tumour.
“The tumour was touching and interfacing with the part of the brain that controls hand movement. Fortunately, we were able to remove the entire tumor and not injure his hand,” he told Fox.
Nolen will likely still need to undergo a few weeks of radiation and chemotherapy to complete his treatment. But with a “strong support system,” Nolen has been able to “focus on the positives.”
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