Jaipur: Patient chants mantras, reads newspaper as doctors remove tumour from brain – ET HealthWorld

The doctors kept giving him commands to see if he was able to correctly listen, understand and execute the command. Doctors asked him to read newspapers, meanwhile Ram continued reciting mantras in four-hour long surgery.

A Jaipur-based hospital’s neurosurgeons removed a brain tumour from a 57-year-old retired army havildar and current gram sevak suffering from episodes of epilepsy seizures. He remained awake and recited Gayatri Mantra and read newspaper as the surgery was being performed. The doctors performed the unique neuro-surgical procedure known as awake craniotomy or awake brain surgery.

The surgery was performed on May 6 and the patient Ridhmal Ram, a resident of Buchawas of Taranagar in Churu district, who was suffering from episodes of seizure. Ram came to Jaipur on Tuesday for medical follow up. “I am fine now. Three months have passed since I had undergone the surgery. When doctors told me that they would keep me awake during the surgery and sought my consent, I did not give it a second thought and gave my consent since I am retired army personnel, I showed no fear. The day came when surgery took place. I kept reciting Vaishno Devi mantras while doctors continued performing the surgery. They also asked me to read the newspaper and kept talking to me,” Ram told TOI.

When Ram came to Jaipur with severe illness, the doctors performed diagnostic tests, the reports of which confirmed low grade brain tumor in the speech area of the brain.

“The brain tumour was in such an area that there were enormous chances of loss of speech and possible paralysis upon surgery. Since there was risk of loss of speech during surgery, we kept him awake by giving local anesthesia. We gave him a newspaper to read to ensure that his speech had not been affected during the surgery. Speech is a complicated process. In the brain, there are representative areas of each alphabet such as A, B etc. If a particular area is affected during surgery, the representative area of the alphabet gets affected and the patient reads the wrong words. Such as if “bat” is written, he will read it as “at” if the representative area of B in the brain gets disturbed. So, during the surgery we asked him to read, so that his speech will not be lost,” said Dr KK Bansal,senior consultant (neurosurgery) at a private hospital, who performed the surgery.

It is not the first of its kind surgery in the hospital. A similar surgery was done at the hospital in 2018.