An Indian guitarist stunned his doctors at a hospital in Bengaluru, India as he strummed on his guitar as the doctors performed a brain surgery on him
An Indian guitarist stunned his doctors at a hospital in Bengaluru, India as he strummed on his guitar as the doctors performed a brain surgery on him to cure his crippled fingers of a rare movement disorder. The operation which was successful was the first in India and it was conducted recently by surgeons at the Bhagawan Mahaveer Jain Hospital, in southern India, on 37-year-old Abishek Prasad who was fully awake during the surgery and gave live feedback to the doctors by playing the guitar.
Prasad, who had been suffering from ‘guitarist dystonia’ for quite some time, has now been cured of the neurological disorder, said doctors. A musician’s dystonia is caused by the brain sending incorrect information to the muscles and is characterized by involuntary, prolonged muscle contractions, which cause affected parts of the body to be twisted into abnormal postures, according to Britain’s Dystonia Society.
In fact, the guitarist who left his job in the information technology sector to follow his passion, playing guitar, developed musician’s dystonia that affected three fingers of his left hand in 2015 and was forced to abandon his passion for some time. During the operation in India, surgeons made an incision in the skull and inserted a 9 centimeters electrode to burn parts of the brain causing the disorder. As the brain has no ability to feel pain, only local anaesthesia was applied to the skin, said doctors.
“Such surgeries require the patient to be awake and perform the function that is triggering the brain to misbehave. The idea is to gauge the patient’s reaction to the surgery as this disorder is specific to a task,” neurosurgeon Sharan Srinivasan said.
The guitarist is a very happy person now and fully satisfied that he will be able to pursue his passion of playing guitar again.
“But now it’s a great feeling for both me and the doctors. It was 100 percent result on the operation table itself. I’m very excited, finally now I can live my dream, can play my guitar again after one month of recovery. Now my fingers are completely listening to me, earlier my fingers were erect and changing from one chord to other was difficult,” Prasad added.
