A brain surgery patient sang her way through the operation — and it was all captured on video.
New Jersey resident Krystina Vied, 30, who was diagnosed with epilepsy at 21, underwent surgery in June to remove a tumor from a “high risk” part of her brain — which had been found after she experienced breakthrough seizures despite being on epilepsy medication.
“The location of the tumor was high risk as it was within the part of her brain that controls her speech,”Nitesh V Patel, M.D., one of the neuro-oncologists at theHackensack Meridian Neuroscience Instituteat Jersey Shore University Medical Center, said in a press release. “We decided to perform some advanced brain mapping with QuickTome, to help preserve her speech.”
This meant that Vied had to stay awake during the surgery and engage parts of her brain used to control her speech — which lit up in an orange and pink color on the QuickTome technology map of her brain — showing doctors which areas to keep intact.
In order to keep the speech parts of her brain constantly working (keeping the visual on the screen), doctors decided to have her sing.
“I was definitely very nervous that I was going to be awake for the surgery, but very excited that Dr. Patel said that he wanted me to sing because I love singing. I sing all the time,” Vied said in the press release.
She added, ”It actually gave me some sort of comfort to know that he thought that was something I was gonna be able to do while in surgery.”
30-year-old Krystina Vied in June.Hackensack Meridian Health
Hackensack Meridian Health
“First they put on ‘Sweet Caroline’ and I wasn’t really feeling that one. I guess, because I wasn’t singing. Then I requestedMoana. That’s the one that I really got into,” Vied recalled.
She appeared in the video to enthusiastically sing along to “How Far I’ll Go” from the 2016 hit Disney film with her eyes closed as doctors continued to operate.
“It’s weird to say this, it was kind of a fun experience. I didn’t even realize that they were doing anything. Dr. Patel was telling me, we’re 25 percent done,” Vied said. “There was constant encouragement, they were trying to sing along with me. It was very calming, which is funny to say about brain surgery.”
A scan of Vied’s brain using the new technology.Hackensack Meridian Health
Dr. Patel said the surgery was ultimately a success since they were able to monitor her “speech networks” while she sang using QuickTome and brain mapping, which helped them “preserve her speech and singing function while maximizing the safe resection of her tumor.”
Vied was discharged 24 hours after the surgery and has since recovered and returned to her job as a preschool teacher without having issues with her speech. However, while doctors removed a majority of the tumor, there was still a “small lining” left which would need to be treated with “radiation and other therapies.”
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Vied said she has been enrolled in a worldwide clinical trial set to combat the remaining part of the tumor, but was overall glad at how the operation went. “It’s so surprising how quickly everything happened. It really is amazing,” she said.
source: people.com
