Doctors conduct brain surgery with patient still awake

In a rare surgery, doctors successfully operated on an 18-year-old girl's brain in Kolkata, as she remained in her senses during the whole procedure.

Dr Amitabha Chanda, neurosurgeon at a city-based private hospital, performed the surgery on student Moubani Karmakar who had a tumour located on the motor area on the left side of the brain.

Dr Chanda said, "She would become paralytic on her right side if the operation was done in a conventional manner. So I had to opt for a unique method where the surgery was done by neuro-navigation."

"Awake craniotomy is done rarely as all patients cannot be cooperative enough with the doctors. Patients' cooperation along with great coordination between the anaesthesia team and surgeons are of utmost importance for this kind of surgeries," Dr Chanda said.

The procedure involves brain surgery while keeping the patient awake thus reducing chances of post-operative paralysis and other complications, he said.

"This is a preferred technique for operations to remove lesions close to, or involving, functionally important regions of the brain, like area responsible for speech, for movement of limbs," the surgeon said.

The tumor was removed in about four hours, without affecting right side of her body or speech, doctors said. u00a0