WATCH: Woman Plays Violin During Her Own Brain Surgery

After professional English violinist Dagmar Turner agreed to undergo an operation to remove a brain tumor, a team of doctors at King’s College Hospital in London, England, developed a plan to minimize the risk of damaging the region of her brain responsible for playing the violin. 

According to Yahoo News, Keyoumars Ashkan, a neurosurgeon consultant at the hospital and a musician himself, led the effort out of concern that the team would be operating in the right frontal lobe of the brain, which is responsible for commanding Turner’s left hand movement – a region of the body essential for playing the violin effectively. 

But in order for the plan to work, the team would have to wake up Turner in the middle of the surgery to play the violin so as to ensure that the operation was going smoothly. 

Turner agreed to the procedure, and the team captured a video of the 53-year-old English virtuoso playing the violin while a team of surgeons operates on her from behind. 

In a video clip of the operation, which was posted by The Guardian, Turner can be seen playing notes on the violin while seemingly in a semi-conscious state. Three surgeons can be seen operating on her brain, while other doctors stand near the front of the camera. 

In a statement released by the hospital Tuesday, Askhan said that while administering tests during procedures is somewhat common, this was the first time an instrument was involved, reports Yahoo News. 

“We perform around 400 resections (tumour removals) each year, which often involves rousing patients to carry out language tests, but this was the first time I’ve had a patient play an instrument,” said Ashkan in a hospital statement Tuesday, reports the news agency. “We managed to remove over 90 percent of the tumour, including all the areas suspicious of aggressive activity, while retaining full function in her left hand.”

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Ashkan reflected on medical advancements in the field of brain surgery, saying that the plan would not have been possible even two decades ago. 

“Twenty years ago the priority would have been to preserve basic movement in a patient,” Ashkan told the Times, reports the Washington Post. “We wouldn’t have dreamed of being able to protect the finest, most delicate, most absolute, critical executive aspect of movement needed in a violinist.”

According to the Associated Press, Turner has lauded Ashkan for his role in developing the operation, which successfully managed to remove over 90% of the brain tumor without damaging Turner’s ability to play the violin and make a living. 

“The thought of losing my ability to play was heart-breaking but, being a musician himself, Prof. Ashkan understood my concerns,” Turner told the news agency. “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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