Retrospectacle: A Neuroscience Blog

Videos of Human Brain Surgery and Tumor Removal

Posted by Shelley Batts on January 4, 2008
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While this short YouTube clip is ostensibly a preview of a TV show about brain surgery and tumor removal, the clip itself had some amazing footage of conscious brain surgery that I hadn’t seen before on the internet. There is a little blood, so if you are squeamish about blood and guts you may not want to peek. For all of you who are curious as to what an exposed human brain looks like, and how modern surgery is performed, check it out!

Continued under the fold….

This video describes how neurosurgeons find tumors by using electrical stimulation in the brain.

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Comments

  1. #1 Brian G
    January 4, 2008

    Now I can see what they did to me when I had a right temporal lobectomy back in ’96 to try and remove the area where I was having seizures. Sadly it didn’t work, but now I know exactly what they did.

  2. #2 Shelley Batts
    January 4, 2008

    Wow, Brian. Were you conscious during the procedure?

  3. #3 Bob
    January 9, 2008

    It is actually a very interesting thing. I had the misfortune of suffering a seizure on the 25th of December 2002. Needless to say my wife panicked and had me rushed to hospital. After spending a few days there, it was decided by my “newly acquired” neurosurgeon that a MRI was called for. It turned out that I was suffering from hydrocephalus, and had been probably for most of my life. Also that cause was determined to be a grown that was obstructing the aqueduct linking the 3rd and 4th ventricles. In place of a shunt though, I landed up have another hole punched through, for the fluid to flow. The growth is situated between the cerebellum and the medulla oblongata. This effectively makes it inoperable. Hats off to the surgeons who worked over the silly season, and yet still did not take the easy route and just put a shunt in. I actually have before and after MRI jpgs, that is if you are interested.

    Back to the surgery story though, that was my first encounter with neurosurgery. Then in 2006, I had a bout of bacterial meningitis, not pleasant, but a good way to loose weight.

    Then to top is all off, in February last year, I had a subdural haematoma. This resulted in my neurosurgeon, having to drain the the congealed blood out from where it had pooled in my head. It had done this just over my left eye, pushing the frontal lobe practically into the ventricles. This resulted in me have 4 procedures, two under general and two under local anaesthetic. There is something to be said for lying on an operation table and talking to someone while they pump liquids into your skull, and then drain, from another hole.

    Needless to say, it was a week in high care, with pipes in my head etc. etc.

    Through all three of these incidents I been lucky to actually have had a neurosurgeon who I see on a regular basis. This has actually mean that he understands my conditions and what my head has been through.

    If you are interested I can email you the MRI before and after scans from the hydrocephalus incident.

    Regards

    P.S. I do have all my other MRIs from all the other incidents etc., but they are not in digital format, so they would be more difficult to scan.

  4. #4 Shelley Batts
    January 10, 2008

    Hi Bob- Your case sounds fascinating, and I’d love to feature it here. Please feel free to email me anytime shelleba@umich.edu, I’d really like to hear more. Best wishes!