Interesting different survival status of musicians with malignant cerebral tumors

Abstract

Introduction: The education of a musician may have an effect on the neuronal functions and organization of the brain, promote brain plasticity, resulting in functional and structural changes. A variety of malign cerebral tumors have affected the musician, instrumentalist or singer, at some time during their lives. No comprehensive investigation for musicians with malignant tumors has been performed yet. The aims of the study are to investigate if there is a relationship between the performed music style (classic or pop/rock) and the malignancy of the tumor.

Patients and methods: The key words were ‘neurosurgery and music’ and the names of composers. We used digital catalogs like ‘Pubmed’ as well as the libraries of universities. We investigated a list of people with brain tumors from the English Wikipedia. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_brain_tumors).We divided musicians into two groups according to their performing of classic or rock-pop music, and their gender.

Results: We found 27 classic and rock/pop musicians who suffered from malign cerebral tumors. The median survival time estimations were 18 (mean 22.33, 95% CI ranged from 7.49 to 37.17) months for pop–rock musicians and 8 (mean 8.67, 95% CI ranged from 4.13 to 12.19) months for classical music performers. However, in Cox regression analysis, performed classical music type was associated with an increased risk of early death, lesser survival time age associated with an adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) of 1.06 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.020 to 1.111; p = .004),

Conclusion: In musicians with malign cerebral tumors, music type performed by musician may affect the survival status, classical musicians have a worse outcome than rock–pop musicians.

Keywords:

• Neurosurgery
• music
• musicians
• brain tumor
• survival
• gender

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.