Operating room technology
Remote surgery
Barriers to healthcare are nothing new. Inequalities of different kinds can impact the sort of medical care a person receives, but when it comes to the physical location of a patient being prohibitive of surgical intervention, there’s a technological answer. Remote surgery uses internet connectivity and a suite of robotics equipment to allow surgeons to conduct procedures while thousands of miles away from patients. Monica Karpinski speaks to three experts at the cutting edge of remote robotic surgery to find out how it could transform surgical procedures and make them accessible to more patients.
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efore Dr Jacques Marescaux performed the first ever remote surgery in 2001, the feat was largely thought impossible. At the time, the available communication technologies – such as cable and satellite – simply seemed too slow or impractical to transmit signals from a surgeon to a robotic system located miles away. But then France Télécom, now known as Orange S.A., gave Marescaux and his team access to their high- speed terrestrial network. They set up a dedicated line from a control room in New York to three robotic arms in Strasbourg, France, with a network delay of just 155 milliseconds. From more than 6,000km away,
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www.practical-patient-care.com
Marescaux successfully removed the gallbladder of a 68-year-old woman in just under an hour. That was 22 years ago. Since then, robotic surgery has gained traction: in the US, 876,000 robot-assisted operations were performed in 2020, up from 753,000 in 2018; from 2013-2018 in England, the UK’s National Health Service saw a 398% increase in robotic surgeries (2,452 vs 11,979). Yet, remote procedures have mostly been done in research settings. One reason for this is the limitation of network speeds: for remote surgery, it should take less than 200 milliseconds for signals to pass from the surgeon to the operating room and back, explains Marescaux, who is
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