Meaning of Awake Craniotomy
Awake brain surgery, also known as an awake craniotomy, is an advanced type of brain surgery that is conducted while the patient is awake and conscious during surgery.
Conditions on Awake Craniotomy
Some brain (neurological) diseases, such as some brain tumours or epileptic seizures uncontrolled by medications, DBS for Parkinson’s disease, surgery for spasticity, surgery for some psychiatric disorders not controlled by medication are treated via awake brain surgery.
Why it is advised?
The main goal is to preserve important areas of the brain- motor area, language area and speech area.
The benefit of Awake Craniotomy.
Your comments will assist your surgeon in ensuring that the proper portion of your brain requires surgery. The surgery also reduces the chance of functional brain damage, which can impede your vision, mobility, and speech.
Why is it done?
Doctors must ensure that they do not damage the eloquent part of the brain if a tumour or section of your brain that causes seizures needs to be surgically removed.
Prior to surgery, it’s tough to locate such locations precisely. Awake brain surgery helps the surgeon pinpoint which parts of your brain regulate particular functions, allowing them to avoid them.
How Surgery is performed?
For sections of your awake brain surgery-Awake Craniotomy, the anesthesiologist will give you medicine to make you sleep. To guarantee your comfort, the neurosurgeon will administer numbing drugs to your scalp.
Doctors put your head in a set position during the surgery to keep it motionless and enhance surgical precision. Your hair will be trimmed in some places. After that, your surgeon will remove a portion of your skull to have access to your brain.
You’ll be given medication and asleep as a small portion of your skull is taken at the start of the procedure, as well as when physicians reattach it at the end of the procedure. Your anesthesiologist will cease giving you sedative drugs during surgery and enable you to wake up.
Your doctor will undertake brain mapping if your brain tumour or epileptic focal is close to parts of your brain that regulate vision, speech, or movement. This offers a map of the brain centre’s that govern each of these functions to your neurosurgeon. During surgery, your surgeon may be able to undertake brain mapping deeper in your brain.
This map is used by your neurosurgeon to avoid injuring certain locations and to keep their functions intact. Your surgeon can safely remove as much of your brain tumour or epileptic focus as feasible using brain mapping and 3-D computer pictures, reducing the risk of disrupting vital bodily processes.
Your medical team will also employ comprehensive 3-D computer scans of your brain, including intraoperative MRI and computer-assisted brain surgery, to guide the removal of as much of the brain tumour or epilepsy focal as feasible before and during surgery.
Anaesthesiologist and surgical team closely monitor and analyse your body and brain functioning, alerting your surgeon if the operation has a negative impact on your brain function.
Summary:
If you have awake brain surgery-Awake Craniotomy to treat epilepsy, you should notice a reduction in your seizures following the procedure. Some patients have no seizures at all, while others have fewer seizures than they did before the procedure.
Your neurosurgeon should have been able to remove the majority of the tumour if you had awake brain surgery to remove it. Other therapies, such as radiation therapy or chemotherapy, may be required to help eliminate any residual tumour cells.