BENGALURU: A 50-year-old Nigerian national underwent an awake craniotomy, a surgery performed while keeping the patient awake, allowing doctors to test the patient’s functions throughout the operation. The surgery was performed on April 14 at Columbia Asia Hospital in Hebbal.
Doctors performed cortical mapping that helps identify important regions of the brain that can be avoided and protected during the surgery.
“Stimulating various areas of the brain to have different effects on the body, like touching the motor region results in twitching and touching the speech areas would prevent the patient from speaking briefly. This helped the surgeons navigate through the main affected areas and perform the surgery accordingly,” said Dr Arjun Srivatsa, senior consultant, neurosurgery, Columbia Asia Hospital. During the procedure, doctors engaged Samuel in a conversation.
Samuel was operated upon to remove a brain tumour that affected areas of speech. Over the past three months, he had been finding it difficult to communicate, often forgetting words or losing his train of thought while talking. His condition worsened with persistent headaches and speech impairment. He was diagnosed with seizure activity in the brain and an MRI confirmed a brain tumour.
Since he is a Jehovah’s Witness (accepting blood transfusion is prohibited), it complicated the surgery further.
The three-hour surgery had no post-operative complications. Samuel is now able to communicate without any difficulty, said Srivatsa.