Cover image via Reddit
A Chinese surgical team has performed the world's first intercontinental robotic prostatectomy, and it worked flawlessly
According to MSN, Dr Zhang Xu, head of urology at the PLA General Hospital in Beijing, performed the entire operation while sitting 8,000km away in Rome.
Using robotic surgical arms controlled via ultra-low-latency 5G and fibre-optic networks, he directed every movement with pinpoint accuracy, from Europe to China.
"Zhang's hands" were in Italy, but the patient lay on an operating table in Beijing.
Image via Reddit
A standby team was present in case anything went wrong, but they didn't need to intervene. It was a one-man show, conducted across continents.
For countries where access to specialist care is limited, particularly in rural areas, this could entirely reshape how surgery is performed.
Lag, the technical challenge that held telesurgery back for years, has now been largely solved.
Image via Reddit
The precision needed for such a procedure requires a delay of no more than a few milliseconds. Thanks to bleeding-edge robotics and lightning-fast networks, that's exactly what Dr Zhang's team achieved.
It's a milestone for global medicine.
"We are overcoming geographic inaccessibility, bringing the best surgical resources from metropolitan cities like Beijing and Shanghai to the most remote areas, in real time," Dr Zhang said.
And if remote surgery continues down this path, expert care could one day be delivered from anywhere, whether that's across the city or across the world.
