Guitarist strums on as doctors conduct awake brain surgery in Karnataka

BENGALURU: In yet another case of restoring neural functions in musicians with dystonia, a team of doctors at a private hospital successfully conducted an awake brain surgery on a patient with 'guitarist dystonia.' "We ask such patients - who are musicians - to perform music while being operated on to help us locate the troubled circuit inside the brain, which does not show up in MRIs," said Dr Sharan Srinivasan, stereotactic & functional neurosurgeon, PRS Neurosciences, Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain Hospital. He, along with Dr Sanjiv CC, senior neurologist and movement disorders specialist, BMJH, successfully performed their third awake brain surgery, this time on D'Souza from Los Angeles and "found 100 per cent instant solution on the operation table for guitarist dystonia," said Srinivasan, popularly known as 'the guitar surgeon.' D'Souza is the third musician patient, who underwent the awake brain surgery at the hands of Srinivasan, Sanjiv and their team after Abhishek and Taskin Ali, from Bangladesh.