Marathon Brain Surgery

Dr. Ramin Javahery
Jul 10, 2017 · 2 min read

I recently came across this picture the other day about a pair of brain surgeons in China who fell to the floor after completing a marathon 32 hours of surgery on a patient.

From the article, the operation involved three surgeons, six anesthesiologists, and eight nurses. Together, they performed six separate operations to remove a series of brain tumors from a single patient from Saturday morning at 8:30 a.m. until Sunday, surgeons worked with great patience at the operating table.

According to the Chinese newspaper the Global Times, this was the longest operation ever undertaken at Fujian Medical University Union Hospital. One of the surgeons, Dr. Chen Jianping, said about the surgery, “The patient had both an aneurysm and brain-stem hemangioblastoma. We needed to remove both tumors in one surgery. This required six different surgical procedures to be conducted on the patient. It can be difficult, risky, and time-consuming. If you are removing one tumor, and the other one breaks, it can be fatal.”

During the operation, the doctors took only short breaks, and even the patient’s family worried whether the surgeons could handle the physical strain. But it all turned out well in the end. In the image above, taken shortly after the surgery was completed, one of the surgeons to seen making a V-sign for “victory.”

For comparison, my longest case was about 14–15 hours. It was an exhausting day with a very complex surgery so I couldn’t imagine doubling that time frame. Overall, extremely long surgeries are a rare entity. They used to be much more common but due to legitimate safety questions (surgeon fatigue, increased infections, and anesthetic challenges), changes in our thinking about management of certain diseases that would require long surgeries (large vascular lesions), and new techniques that reduce the need for more complex approaches (endovascular treatment, radiosurgery, and skull base endoscopy), the frequency of very long surgeries has declined. I’m happy that these surgeons achieved a positive outcome I wouldn’t expect anyone replicating this procedure stateside.

Dr. Ramin Javahery
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