CGTN reported on the 12th that China had successfully performed the first remote robotic prostate surgery. According to the report, Professor Zhang Xu conducted the surgery remotely in Rome, Italy. He is a urologist at the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Hospital and the head of urology at the Third Medical Center in Beijing.
Zhang visited Rome from the 5th to the 7th to attend a laparoscopy, robotic engineering, and AI conference. He remotely performed a prostate removal surgery that took place in Beijing, China. The surgery was done by controlling a robotic arm through a surgical console that showed a live view of the patient. He successfully removed the lesions from the prostate while he was 8,000 kilometers (4971 miles) away from the actual site. The biggest concern was communication interference, but it never happened. The standard delay time for remote surgery is 200 milliseconds, but CGTN reported that the communication delay for this surgery was only 135 milliseconds. “The biggest problem with a remote surgery is communication – whether there is any delay,” Zhang noted.
“During today’s surgery, there was almost no delay, and it was almost the same as an on-site surgery,” he added.
Zhang expressed extreme satisfaction with the achievement. His team announced plans to conduct experiments using this technology to support surgical treatments for their national military.
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