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Liu Minxia
mllmx@msn.com
A MAN from Jilin Province played the guitar during a brain surgery that successfully brought back the function of one of his fingers in a Shenzhen hospital yesterday.
The surgery was to cure a neurological disorder that had affected his right middle finger for 23 years and ruined his career as a guitarist.
Li Xiaonan, 57, majored in guitar performance in college but the middle finger of his right hand began going stiff when he was 34. Li had to stop and rest the finger before it would become flexible. It affected his ability to play the guitar or write, Li said.
He went to different hospitals across the country over the past two decades, where he was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s or told he simply had psychological problems.
The medication he was prescribed didn’t fix the problem, but left him suffering from side effects.
Earlier this month, Li went to Shenzhen No. 2 People’s Hospital where Dr. Cai Xiao-dong diagnosed him as having focal hand dystonia (FHD), a disorder more common among athletes and musicians that causes a loss of control in certain muscles.
Li talked for two hours during his first meeting with Cai, who later decided to give him a brain surgery called deep brain stimulation (DBS).
Li was asked to play the guitar going into the operating room yesterday to see how his finger moved before being treated, and then play the guitar again while he was on the operating table to help the doctors decide where to stimulate in his brain with electricity through two holes doctors drilled in his skull.
“The operation was successful and he could play the guitar very smoothly after we found the right place to stimulate,” said Cai. “Li’s daughter had hoped her father could teach her to play the guitar, and it will be possible after what we saw during surgery.”
FHD is not rare, but using DBS to treat it is very rare and the surgery on Li was the seventh of its kind in the world, Cai said.Li plays the guitar in the operating room yesterday. Liu Minxia
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