CNN story helps surgeon perform operation

A brain surgeon performed what he called a "life-saving" surgery on a teenager by removing a large brain tumor using a method he read about on CNN.com just three days earlier. Thomas Ellis, a senior neurosurgeon at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, the United States, said he had become "very demoralized" after an unsuccessful six-hour operation to remove a tumor from a 19-year-old named Brandon. The article was about the "Omni directional dielectric mirror," a pen-shaped fiber-optic tool that allows surgeons to carry out minimally invasive surgery on areas too difficult or delicate to access. That night, Ellis contacted the neurosurgeon quoted in the story who put him in touch with Omni Guide, the Boston-based company that manufactures the handheld device.