The high-pitched sound of an alto saxophone accompanied by an electronic piano resonated in the examination room, replicating the tunes often heard in pachinko parlors, while a semiconscious patient lay in bed.
Ryo Noda, a professor at the Osaka University of Arts, was playing saxophone for a master carpenter and pachinko devotee who had fallen and struck his head at a construction site two weeks earlier, sustaining compound fractures.
The live musical performance at Nihon University Itabashi Hospital's critical care center was a novel attempt by Noda and Nariyuki Hayashi, of the Nihon University Medical Department, to treat patients with serious brain damage.