The medical science community is proving that robots can
be used to perform surgery under the direction of a surgeon
who is not at the same physical location. Called remote surgery,
or telesurgery, it is eliminating the need for a surgeon
to be in the same room as their patient (or even on the same
continent), so long as the communication link between them
and the robotic device performing the surgery is fast enough.
Telesurgery may still be in its infancy, but the availability
of greater bandwidth, improvements in communication technology,
and increased computing power have moved it out of the realm
of science fiction and into the operating room.
The hope is that in time patients won't need to travel great
distances to receive the most advanced treatment and best
medical care. Already a considerable amount of research is
underway, particularly in military applications.
The first remote surgery occurred in September 2001, when
surgeons in New York operated on a 68-year-old woman in Strasbourg,
France. Two medical teams were involved in the procedure,
linked by a video and a high-speed fiber-optic line, and
surgeons operated via remote-controlled robots to take out
the patient’s gall bladder by laparoscopy.
Dubbed Project Lindbergh, after Charles Lindbergh's pioneering
flight from New York to Paris, the operation was a medical
success. Just as Lindbergh's flight made travel across the
Atlantic possible by air, Project Lindbergh proved it possible
for a surgeon to perform an operation on a patient anywhere
in the world. Project Lindbergh was hailed as the medical
breakthrough of the year, and Professor Jacques Marescaux,
who led the team, told the BBC that the operation laid the "foundation
for the globalisation of surgical procedures."
Two and a half years later, Dr. Mehran Anvari, founding
Director of the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS),
in Ontario, Canada, began performing dozens of remote laparoscopy
procedures for a rural community 250 miles away from Hamilton.
According to a PBS report released around the same time,
early studies of robotic telesurgical techniques have indicated
that this form of surgery offers "less risk of infection,
shorter hospital stays, and less pain and scarring compared
to traditional surgery."
The biggest challenge for telesurgery is the potential for
too much of a delay between the image of the patient, the
surgeon sending an instruction, and the robot responding.
Yet, as a team of Canadian surgeons and scientists have recently
proved - surgeons and robots can be linked via a 4,000 mile
Internet connection, or by satellite. This finding was published
recently in the The International Journal of Medical Robotics
and Computer Assisted Surgery and reported in The Science
Daily, among other scientific journals.
While the experimental surgical trials showed that the delays
were much greater when they used the satellite link than
using the Internet, the researchers found that, after a short
period of practice, the surgeon got used to this and there
were no measurable differences in the quality of the surgery
using the two forms of communication. This finding is ground-breaking
as it demonstrates that telesurgery can be conducted over
regular, public Internet and satellite connections.
Project Lindbergh had the exclusive use of a private “end-to-end” as
well as a transatlantic fiber-optic line provided by France
Telecom Group. While a breakthrough for both telecommunications
and for telesurgery, most hospitals would not be able to
afford this technology
"This is an exciting next step forward in developing
telesurgery, which holds the promise of many new efficient
and cost-effective ways of providing advanced healthcare
services," says project leader Reiza Rayman.
Though some critics worry about the potential legal implications
of telesurgery, the evidence is clear: Robots in the operating
room are here to stay, and they could soon be arriving at
your local hospital.
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