Patient Plays Saxophone Through 9-Hour Brain Surgery

This is a crazy story…doctors in Italy performed a 9 hour brain surgery on a musician while he was awake and playing the saxophone. A team operated on the 35-year-old man, identified only as GZ, in order to remove his brain tumor but they wanted to make sure they didn’t compromise his neurological functions. GZ told surgeons playing music was most important to him, so they allowed him to play the saxophone during “awake surgery”.  It allowed the surgeons to see the brain functions he utilized to play. So what did he play?  GZ played the theme song from the 1970 movie “Love Story,” and the Italian national anthem, at various times throughout.

GZ later told the hospital he felt tranquility rather than fear during the procedure.  He returned to his normal life after recovering.