A Florida man has amazed both the medical and music worlds by playing System of a Down and Deftones on guitar while undergoing brain surgery. According to WSVN Miami, the guy, named Christian Nolen, had an awake craniotomy at the University of Miami’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Centre. The method entails removing a portion of the skull to get access to the brain, and then replacing the bone following surgery. This Miami medical clinic, in instance, purportedly executes more craniotomies per year than any other in the United States.
According to WSVN, Nolen was conscious during the procedure and even performed songs by System of a Down and Deftones on his guitar. “It was unbelievable to wake up and have somebody actively operating inside of your skull. Nolen described the encounter to the news site as “kind of an insane feeling.”
Why Nolen Played Guitar During Brain Surgery
Apparently, Nolen was injured during a concert, and he began to notice that he had lost sensation in the left side of his body from the waist up, including his face. Dr. Ricardo Komotar, a neurosurgeon and head of the University of Miami’s Brain Tumour Programme, detected the tumour in Nolen’s brain.
“When a tumor is involving or near a critical part of the brain — something that controls the ability to speak or understand language or move — we want to do the surgery awake to continually monitor the patient, so you know if you start to violate normal brain functions,” Director of the brain tumor program at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Dr. Ricardo Komotar, M.D., explained.
“These types of tumors, if you don’t have the ability to remove the tumor with the patient awake, actually become much more dangerous,” Komotar added.
“Having the patient awake and playing guitar while we take out the tumor allows us to be as aggressive as possible, yet still maintain his quality of life and his manual dexterity,” he said.
Nolen was put to sleep with anaesthesia at the start of the treatment, but he was awakened for the critical two-hour section of the surgery and handed a guitar once he became aware of his surroundings. As he performed songs he’d been practicing — riffs from Deftones and System of a Down — physicians evaluated his hand function throughout the process.
“As we were finishing the case at the very back of the tumour, we noticed that his hand function started to decline,” Komotar, the surgeon, said. “The tumour was contacting and interacting with the portion of the brain that regulates hand movement. Fortunately, we were able to remove the entire tumour without injuring his hand.
Nolen still has more treatments and therapy ahead of him while he heals from surgery, but he’s glad to be able to play guitar and live an active lifestyle again.
Serj Tankian’s Reaction
Serj Tankian of System of a Down became aware of the news, referencing an article about X and commenting, “What????”
We don’t know which songs Nolen played during his operation, but according to sources other than WSVN-TV, including Fox News Digital [via NME], he remembered playing System and Deftones tracks.
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