BLOOMINGTON - For those who think Twitter is just for brainless updates on what some stranger is having for breakfast, you may want to log on Thursday.

OSF St. Joseph Medical Center is documenting a brain surgery on the popular micro-blogging Web service, said hospital spokeswoman Christy Germanis. The hospital's user name is @OSFStJoseph.

The procedure began around 10:30 a.m. and is expected to take about three hours.

St. Joseph marketing specialist Rachel Wakefield will be posting most of the Tweets - 140 characters or less - during the procedure, Germanis said.

A documentary crew was already planning on filming the procedure for a segment for National Medical Report, an educational television production firm, Germanis said.

The patient gave consent to the documentary and the Tweets. The patient is undergoing a a left frontal temporal craniotomy for resection of a brain tumor with intraoperative monitoring, according to the hospital's Twitter feed. Neurosurgeon Emilio Nardone's goal will be to remove as much of the tumor as possible, a Tweet said.

At 10:40 a.m., "the patient's head is being shaved." By 11:02 a.m., "the scalp is flapped open to expose the skull."

Germanis said that live-Twittering the surgery is a way for the hospital to promote the wide range of procedures its doctors perform locally, as well as document the complexity of an actual brain surgery.

"We've been wanting to Twitter a surgery for a long time," Germanis said. "The best thing is that it gets the word out that our local hospital does these procedures."

The hospital isn't the first in Illinois to live-Twitter a surgical procedure. Sherman Hospital in Elgin documented a four-hour hysterectomy procedure April 2 using more than 365 updates.

On the Web:

http://twitter.com/OSFStJoseph