Violinist plays while surgeons remove her brain tumor
London's King’s College Hospital doctors removed 90% of tumor while patient retained hand function
Dr. Mikhail Varshavski discusses a video showing a woman playing the violin as surgeons remove a tumor from her brain.
At King’s College Hospital in London, surgeons removed a brain tumor from a 53-year-old violinist as she played.
After Dagmar Turner expressed her concern of losing her musical ability due to brain surgery, the neurosurgical team agreed to map her brain before surgery to determine which areas of her brain were active while she played the violin while simultaneously monitoring the parts of her brain responsible for her language and movement.
“We knew how important the violin is to Dagmar so it was vital that we preserved function in the delicate areas of her brain that allowed her to play," Professor Keyoumars Ashkan, consultant neurosurgeon at King’s College Hospital, said in a hospital statement.
The surgeons woke her up during her surgery to play the violin in order to ensure they had not damaged the part of her brain responsible for the intricate hand movements necessary to play the instrument.
“This is something doctors who do this type of procedure do regularly,” Dr. Mikhail Varshavski (also known as "Doctor Mike") told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo on Thursday. “They do this to make sure that when they’re taking out a tumor, they’re not affecting the patient’s own abilities."
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Brain mapping procedures, like the one done on Turner before her surgery, uses functional MRIs to understand what parts of the brain are active when doing specific activities, according to Doctor Mike.
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“It was very important that the left side of her body works well in order to play the violin," Doctor Mike explained. "When doing the procedure, they wanted to make sure she was still able to play the violin while removing and resecting the tumor."
Typically, doctors will test patients' language centers instead during brain surgery. This reportedly marked the first time Ashkan asked a patient to play an instrument during this type of procedure.
Turner plays the violin in the Isle of Wight Symphony Orchestra and various choral societies.
“The thought of losing my ability to play was heartbreaking but, being a musician himself, Professor Ashkan understood my concerns," Turner said. "He and the team at King’s went out of their way to plan the operation—from mapping my brain to planning the position I needed to be in to play."
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Surgeons were able to remove over 90 percent of the tumor while retaining the full function of Turner’s left hand, according to Ashkan. She left the hospital three days after the procedure and hopes to return soon to her orchestra. Turner was first diagnosed in 2013 with a large glioma after she suffered a seizure during the symphony. She is now being observed by a local hospital and is being cared for by her husband and teenage son.
Associated Press contributed to this story