The Unforgettable Neurosurgical Operations of Musicians in the Last Century

Abstract

Background: There has been no study of craniotomies of famous musicians throughout history. This subject was investigated.

Methods: The key search words were "neurosurgery and music" and the names of composers. We used digital catalogs such as PubMed as well as university libraries.

Results: We found 4 musicians from the twentieth century with different neurosurgical diseases: Maurice Ravel, George Gershwin, Clara Haskil, and Pat Martino.

Conclusions: Neurosurgical operations affected the musical careers and lives of mentioned musicians and two of them died. Neurosurgeons can understand the effect of limited diagnostic tools such as magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography at the time on the poor outcome of 2 musicians.

Keywords: Clara Haskil; Craniotomy; George Gershwin; History of neurosurgery; Maurice Ravel; Musician; Pat Martino; Traumatic brain injury; Tumor.