Musician plays guitar during brain surgery
Taskin Ali, a 31-year-old computer science engineer, who was operated for a rare neurological disorder in an Indian hospital two weeks ago, was strumming his guitar during the procedure, reports Times of India.
He was suffering from guitarist’s dystonia, which rendered his left hand numb. The two-hour brain circuit surgery to tackle the disorder was performed in Bhagawan Mahaveer Jain Hospital on May 17.
Ali first noticed the problem in 2013 when he was playing guitar for no less than 10 hours a day. He worked in a company that developed video games and his job was to provide background music for the games.
“I used to find it difficult to move my left hand fingers while playing the guitar but that was my bread and butter. I thought I should practise more and increased it to 14 hours a day. But my condition only worsened. I was not able to play guitar at all,” Ali told TOI.
In 2017, Ali read a Times of India report about a surgery conducted in Bengaluru on a guitarist suffering from the same disorder. He got in touch with Dr Sharan Srinivasan, consultant neurosurgeon at Jain hospital who had conducted the surgery. He also got in touch with the guitarist, Abhishek Prasad, who had undergone surgery.
Ali sold one of his guitars and other music equipment to raise money for the surgery that cost him Rs 2.25 lakh. Ali didn’t inform his parents too and landed in Bengaluru with his uncle on May 14.
Guitarist’s dystonia occurs due to abnormal and involuntary flexion of muscles because of rigorous use. “We usually do not extensively use the last two fingers of the hand, especially left. But that’s quintessential for the guitarists. No CT scan or MRI scan can show the problem,” says Dr Sharan.
Ali was put on local anaesthesia during the surgery. He played the guitar, Dr Sharan and and Dr Sanjiv CC, a movement disorder neurologist, operated on him.
“Through a 14 mm insertion to the brain, we burnt 9.3 cm of the ‘problematic’, ‘misbehaving’ circuit the brain. We made eight burns for 40 seconds each and parallelly checked the movement of the fingers in his left hand as he played the guitar. These extremely challenging surgeries improve the quality of life. Throughout the surgery a special MRI scanning was done and we used a software for precision,” Dr Sharan explained.
The disorder is said to affect one percent of musicians, especially guitarists. “For musicians suffering from this problem, fingers do not coordinate with each other. The problem is resistant to medical drugs and surgery is the only option,” said Dr Sanjiv.
Ali said he was conscious of his finger movements throughout the surgery.
“I was unable to even hold a cup of coffee in my left hand or flip a coin. Now, I have to retrain my left hand fingers for my regular work,” he said.
Ali’s parents landed in Bengaluru on Wednesday. They were shocked to learn that their son had to undergo a brain surgery to fix the problem in his hand.
