Internet Connects Surgeon and Surgical Robot

A surgeon's expertise may soon be made available to patients lying in operating rooms thousands of miles away, thanks to robotic surgery.

Researchers of the department of medical biophysics at the University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario, Canada) set out to test whether it is possible to link the surgeon and a surgical robot by the Internet and by satellite. The networks were compared during left internal mammary artery (LIMA) dissection in pigs. Length of LIMA dissected and surgical quality on a five-point scale were recorded. Also, satellite bandwidth was decreased to determine a limit for telesurgery.

The trials showed that although delays were much greater when they used the satellite link than when using the Internet (600 milliseconds versus 55 milliseconds, respectively), no significant differences existed in LIMA dissection during the ground satellite phases or in quality of surgery. After a short period of practice, the surgeon got used to the delay, and there were no measurable differences in the quality of the surgery using the two forms of communication. With decreasing satellite bandwidth, surgery was not possible below 3 Mb/s, and quality of surgery was significantly decreased when compared to 9 Mb/s. The study was published in the June 2007 edition of The International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer-Assisted Surgery.

"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,” said project leader Reiza Rayman.

In theory, there is no reason why the surgeon needs to be physically close to their patient during robotic surgery, as long as the communication link between the console and the robotic device is fast. The problem is that when using communication networks there may be too much of a delay between the image of the patient being captured and being displayed on the console, or between the surgeon sending an instruction and the robot responding.


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