amazing brain tumor surgery

Surgery with a smile: wide-awake brain surgery

If he's awake and I keep taking tumor out and he keeps moving and he's fine, I can keep pushing the resection," Dr. Mintz explained before the surgery. The goal: excise more than 90 percent of Mr. Dubovich's cancer, called a glioblastoma, because studies indicate that can lengthen survival time.

"We know we can't remove the entire tumor," the surgeon said. "At some point, we have to stop because the tumor is intermingled with normal brain matter."

Imagine the brain is the white paint in a bucket, and the tumor is a glob of red paint dropped into it, Dr. Mintz said. There are very red areas that could be scooped out, but then some pinky-white parts, whitey-pink parts and then white.

"As you get into that whitey-pink area, you're taking more brain than tumor," he said, and that could unacceptably impair the patient's function.