Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston live-tweets brain tumor surgery

GlobalPost

Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center in Houston is live-tweeting a brain surgery for about four hours this morning.

Under the Twitter handle @houstonhospital, the hospital will provide a "rabid play-by-play" removal of a brain tumor using the hashtag #MHbrain from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. CT, CBS News reported.

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The operation is being performed by Dr. Dong Kim, a neurosurgeon who worked on the team that treated former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords after she suffered a gunshot wound to the head, according to Time magazine.

The first incision will be made at about 10 a.m. CT, and the brain will be exposed for about 90 minutes as Kim locates and then removes the tumor from a 21-year-old woman.

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“What will come out of this is a detailed, real-time sequence of what happens in a brain surgery through all the stages from preparation, to shaving the hair, to making the incision, to draping,” Kim told Mashable. “People are very anxious and want to know what goes on in a brain surgery like this.”

Video clips from inside the operating room will be posted to YouTube, and photos shared on Pinterest. Storify compilations will recap each hour of the broadcast, according to Mashable.

The move comes after the hospital live-tweeted open-heart surgery in February. The procedure was viewed an estimated 125 million times through Twitter, Storify and media coverage, Mashable reported.

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