A professional singer, Alama Kante, has sung through surgery to remove a tumour from her throat, so surgeons could avoid damaging her vocal cords, BBC reports.

The Guinean singer, who is based in France, was given just a local anaesthetic and hypnotised to help with the pain during the operation in Paris.

Kante was nervous about losing her voice, but in a "world first" her surgeon suggested she sing throughout.

He said one slip of his scalpel could have destroyed her singing voice.

Professor Giles Dhonneur, who is head of the anaesthesia and intensive care department at Henri Mondor hospital, performed the operation in April but gave a press conference over the weekend, playing a video of Kante singing as he worked.

The Times reported that singer Kante, who has made a full recovery, was also at the press conference where she revealed she had been asked before the operation if she wanted to "travel".

"I let myself be guided. It's as though I was not in the operating theatre at all, I was far away in Senegal," she said.