A musician who was hypnotised sang as a tumour was removed from her throat so surgeons could make sure they didn’t damage her vocal cords.
Alama Kante, a married mother-of-one, had the operation while listening to a hypnotist at the Henri Mondor hospital in Creteil near Paris.
Gilles Dhonneur, head of anaesthesia and intensive care departments, carried out the delicate operation in April.
One small slip of his scalpel could have destroyed Miss Kante’s voice forever.
Ms Kante had a parathyroid gland tumour but feared having it removed in case she lost her voice.
According to Mr Dhonneur, the only way of knowing if her vocal chords had been protected was to get Miss Kante to sing during the procedure.
She sang two songs from her album Generation Sabbar which is about modern African society and To-long which means ‘fight and get what you want’.
Ms Kante, originally from Guinea, was first given a local anesthetic and then hypnotised by Asmaa Khaled.
She then went into a trance and imagined she had travelled to Africa.
‘Because she was singing during the crictical moments, we could be sure that the operation was going well’, said Professor Dhonneur.
Ms Kante, who now lives on the outskirts of Paris, said the experience is difficult to explain.
She said: ‘There was a woman next to me who said, don’t worry everything will be fine.
‘She asked me to go on a journey and I said okay and she said I was going to Senegal.
‘It’s as though I was not in the operating theatre at all, I was far away in Senegal.’
Despite the hypnosis, Ms Kante said she did feel pain at one point during the operation but when the hypnotist told her it would go, it did.
According to The Times, Ms Kante has now made a full recovery and hopes to produce a record in UK.
Source: Graphic Online