In a medical breakthrough, ETH Zurich of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and CU Medicine of the Chinese University of Hong Kong have finally conducted a teleoperated magnetic endoscopy surgery. A stomach wall biopsy was performed on the swine model during the said procedure with the help of a remotely controlled device.
It included a clinician who was present in the Hong Kong operating theatre and a remote specialist in Zurich, Switzerland, 9,300 kilometres away. Both the experts used leading-edge technology to manipulate the procedure, whereby the faraway expert used a game controller from his console in Zurich.
This study showcases how such technology could provide specialized surgical care to remote regions, particularly where local expertise may be lacking. Findings were published in the peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal *Advanced Intelligent Systems*.
“Teleoperated endoscopy not only enables distant surgical training and mentoring but simultaneously provides diagnostic and surgical services to distant areas without adequate local expertise. The trained nurses can be guided and instructed by the remote expert to perform procedures. As access improves, literally millions of patients worldwide will have timely diagnosis and treatment of gastrointestinal cancer,” Dr. Shannon Melissa Chan said, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at CU Medicine.
According to Professor Dr. Bradley Nelson, the Director of the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich, “The next step of our research involves performing tele-endoscopy on a human stomach. But there is an immense potential outside of endoscopic interventions like tumor diagnosis for this technology. This applies to its application in other parts of the gastrointestinal tract, neurovascular areas, and in foetal surgery.”
A Zurich-based surgeon has successfully tested a magnetic endoscope guided via an external magnetic field on a sedated pig using a video game controller. The endoscope performed a U-turn and biopsy in the stomach with very small latency-less than 300 milliseconds. Other tests used similar controllers. What this experiment means is that remote surgeries, even at extreme situations like space missions, might become true and prove critical for patients in remote areas.
