Telesurgery 2001 – Global Surgical Connections

Telesurgery allows a surgeon to operate on a patient in a different location using high-speed communication networks and multi-armed robots. 

On 7 September 2001,  the first transatlantic surgical procedure was performed between New York City and Strasbourg, France, across a distance of approximately 4,300 miles (7,000 km). French surgeon Jacques Marescaux operated on a 69-year-old woman in France who needed her gallbladder removed, directing the   laparoscopic operation  from New York. Fibre-optic communication between the two countries enabled Marescaux's hand movements to be transmitted to robotic surgical instruments equipped with an endoscopic camera and images from the camera to be sent back to Marescaux. The average delay was 150 milliseconds in each direction, short enough to make an effective operation possible.

In 2003, Iranian-born Canadian surgeon Mehran Anvari helped perform the world's first telerobotically assisted operation between hospitals in Canada. Anvari's hand, wrist and finger movements were translated through a console to control an endoscopic camera and surgical instruments in the abdomen of a patient approximately 250 miles (400 kilometres) away, to perform a Nissen fundoplication (surgery to treat chronic acid reflux).

Latency (the time delay between the surgeon moving their hands and the distant robotic arms responding) can make telesurgery difficult in many scenarios. On the other hand, telesurgery can help provide a patient with surgery requiring specialist expertise without having to leave the local hospital. Telesurgery may also be useful on battlefields and, one day, on space missions. Robot-assisted surgery eliminates the normal hand tremors of a surgeon, who can sit in a comfortable position during the operation.

Today, robotic operations are repeatedly performed for procedures such as prostate removal and repair of obstructions between the kidney and ureter. Robotic devices are being developed to provide increasingly sophisticated force feedback to the surgeon's hands so that the surgeon can better "feel" distant tissues.

Historical figures mentioned in the article: Jacques Marescaux (b. 1948), Mehran Anvari (b. 1959)

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