Robot-assisted surgeons remove gall bladder an ocean away

Surgeons have successfully performed a trans-Atlantic operation using robots and computer technology to do the snipping.

A team of surgeons in France and the United States removed a gall bladder from a 68-year-old woman in Strasbourg, France. The patient had no complications and was released from the hospital two days later.

Surgeons operated on the patient two months after establishing the technique was safe by operating on six pigs.

A surgeon in New York sent commands to a robot 7,000 kilometres away. Optical fibres transmitted the video signals across the ocean to the surgeon.

"It's a phenomenal step and we can't even begin to imagine the implications for medicine," said Jacques Marescaux, the surgeon who pioneered the research and conducted the operation. "The barriers of space and distance have collapsed," he told a news conference.

Marescaux said the operation shows a surgeon could feasibly take part in an operation anywhere in the world. The technology could help doctors to train surgeons in lesser developed countries.

Until now, telesurgery has been hampered by the time needed to convert video images and surgical movements into electrical signals, as well as bandwith constraints.

Fibre optic cables and high-speed data decompression allowed the researchers to cut the time lag down to about three-twentieths of a second, an almost imperceptible delay.

Robot: pass me the scalpel

In laparoscopic surgery, a surgeon watching a video monitor guides and manipulates a tiny camera and surgical instruments inserted through a small incision in the patient.

The extra twist involved in a computer-assisted laparoscopic surgery is that a robot moves the instruments according to the surgeon's hand signals.

The procedure will be described in the September 27 issue of the journal, Nature.