LONDON — Music meets medicine when the patient played the clarinet solo when she had brain surgery Parkinson's disease and proved that the treatment works in real time.
Denise Bacon, 65, saw her finger movements instantly improve during four hours of deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery while she stayed awake and played a musical instrument. King's College London Hospital This was stated in a press release on Tuesday.
In 2014, the retired speech therapist was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Since then, she has had difficulty walking, swimming, dancing and playing her beloved clarinet as the progressive neurological disorder, which affects movement, has taken over her body.
To help Bacon regain these abilities, Keyumars Ashcan, a professor of neurosurgery, performed DBS on her, implanting electrodes in Bacon's brain and monitoring her body's reactions in real time.
“Stimulating electrodes are placed into deep structures of the brain,” Ashkan said in a hospital news release, adding that it is “a long-established procedure for improving movement symptoms in patients with movement disorders.”
Although the brain itself has no pain receptors, Bacon was given a local anesthetic to numb her scalp and skull, and doctors made holes in her skull the size of half a small coin and implanted stimulating electrodes inside.
A pulse generator, similar to a pacemaker, was then connected to the electrodes to send targeted electrical signals to the brain.
“As an avid clarinetist, Denise was encouraged to bring her clarinet into the operating room to see if the procedure would improve her ability to play, which was one of Denise's main goals during the surgery,” Ashkan said.
An amateur musician, Bacon played the instrument in the East Grinstead Concert Band until symptoms of Parkinson's disease prevented her from continuing her career five years ago.
However, while playing during surgery, she immediately noticed an improvement in her arm movements.
“I remember how my right hand could move with much greater ease after applying the stimulation, and this in turn improved my ability to play the clarinet, which I was very happy about,” she said in a press release.
Brain surgeries usually require general anesthesia, but some procedures require the patient to remain awake so doctors can make sure they don't damage vital brain functions.
This is not the first procedure of this kind that Ashkan has carried out at King's College Hospital. In 2020 violinist played jazz classic how a tumor was removed from her brain.
Bacon also said she has seen early progress in walking and is now looking forward to returning to activities such as swimming and dancing.
For the next 20 years, a pulse generator implanted in her chest will help Bacon by constantly delivering electrical impulses and allowing her to return to the hobbies and interests she loves, King's College Hospital said in a statement.
