27-year-old musician plays his saxophone DURING 12-hour brain surgery

This is the incredible moment a musician played his saxophone during a 12-hour brain operation.

Carlos Aguilera, 27, gave the remarkable performance while undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumour at an operating theatre at the Carlos Haya Hospital in Malaga, Spain, two months ago.

He read and played a jazz classic to an audience of 16 medics, including neurosurgeons and anaesthetists, enabling them to ensure that they were not damaging his ability to play music.

Yesterday, Mr Aguilera appeared at a press conference to speak of the extraordinary surgery.

Details and images of the operation where revealed to attendees, before the musician played his saxophone again to prove it had been a success. 'Without music I'm nothing,' he told the audience.

According to local reports, the October 15 surgery was the first time ever that a patient in a European hospital has played the saxophone while undergoing such an operation.

The only other surgery of its kind is understood to have taken place in the United States.

Mr Aguilera, who belongs to an orchestra and plays in a municipal band in Malaga, was sedated and given painkillers for the operation. However, he remained awake, without general anaesthesia.

Three neurosurgeons, two neuropsychologists, three neurophysiologists, an anaesthetist and five nurses were among the health professionals involved in the 12-hour intervention.

During the surgery, a medic held up a musical score for Mr Aguilera to read.

The musician then performed the jazz piece, Misty, while neurosurgeons worked on his brain.

It is unclear at what point in the surgery he performed the classic.

Speaking after the successful operation, neurosurgeon Guillermo Ibanez said: 'We operated on Carlos like this because he's a professional musician and his working life depends on this activity.'

Mr Aguilera, who first started playing the saxophone at only nine years old and now plays it professionally, said he felt like he was 'lying on a beach' when he was being operated on.

He said: 'Two months ago I was on a stretcher.

'Now I have my whole life in front of me. I have been born again. Music has accompanied me for more than half my life so when the doctors said we could do this I didn't think twice.'

In the U.S.-based surgery, concert violinist Roger Frisch was able to help surgeons locate the exact spot in his brain to place an implant by playing his instrument during a brain operation.

The concert master with the Minnesota Orchestra was diagnosed in 2009 with essential tremors, a condition that occurs when parts of the brain that control movement start sending abnormal signals.

Frisch underwent his operation last Spring.

Four weeks later, he was performing again with his orchestra. 

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