UK Docs Perform First Remote-Control Heart Surgery 142
ByronScott writes "Doctors at a British hospital have just carried out the world's first surgery using a remote-controlled robot. The procedure fixed a patient's irregular heart rhythm, and although the doctor was in the same hospital as the patient — just through the wall in another room — developers of the RC surgery technology believe this is the first step toward long-distance operations. Imagine a doctor in London performing surgery on your heart in New York!"
Too bad if the connection drops out... (Score:5, Insightful)
in the middle of a critical action during a life threatening operation. I'd also be worried about lag as one would assume that some surgical procedures require timely precision.
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That's why we gotta get those dirty pirates and their bittorrents off the nets.
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This is why we need to demand more net neutrality!
Re:Too bad if the connection drops out... (Score:5, Funny)
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Stargate Universe Reference (Score:3, Informative)
As usual science fiction is faster than reality -- although by just 2 weeks this time.
Heart surgery was performed in Stargate Universe "Divided" (S0112) on Dr Rush to remove an alien tracking device. The earth surgeon arrived by out-of-body experience while their ship was being bombarded by an alien fleet. ("Welcome to destinty. We are under attack by aliens, shields are holding, for now")
And yes, the connection was lost just before the device was removed leaving the clueless body double to do the actual re
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And yes, the connection was lost just before the device was removed
Wait a minute... Are they using Verizon on the Destiny?
Good News and Bad news (Score:2)
Well there is good news and bad news. The technology is developed and working... that is the good news.
It is manufactured by Toyota ... that is the bad news.
Hope they have a black box attached like the government mandates the aircraft industry to have.
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in the middle of a critical action during a life threatening operation. I'd also be worried about lag as one would assume that some surgical procedures require timely precision.
Surely they would require a private virtual circuit for this. Doing this over the internet is asking for trouble.
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Doing this over a single connection is asking for somebody, at some point, to die.
The only way this could achieve a reasonable level of safety is multiple circuits for load balancing and redundancy.
There is no way this would be used on a regular basis anyways. I would imagine it is being developed for very remote and rural areas so that a surgeon could perform life saving surgery on a patient whose condition has high mortality rates increasing every minute
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Surgery is an extremely delicate in any situation requiring telepresence like this. The scalpel hitching even a little bit could cause death.
In some ways this technique is actually superior to normal surgery, because the device can remove the natural slight shaking that anyone's hand, even a skilled surgeon, will exhibit. It can also scale the movements way down so that for example 1 centimeter of movement of the hand translates to one millimeter of movement of the instrument, allowing much greater precision. I'm not saying there aren't potential problems, but I think it's silly to think that /. commenters have thought of them and the people w
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The worst would be if the IW devs had something to do with creating the system. Then you'd rejoin and be thrown into an appendix removal lobby instead of your bypass lobby.
High Ping Bastards (Score:5, Insightful)
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surgeons, not equipment (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not the equipment, it's the surgeon. Depending on the type of procedure, some surgeons can be highly specialized in a specific kind of surgery. Even the large medical centers don't always have all the specialists on staff at all times.
So $1'000'000 for the robot is a lot cheaper for a regional-level center than maintaining a dedicated surgical staff who are trained in every kind of specialized surgery. Furthermore, specialists need to practice, and in a smaller hospital they may not get enough cases to
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First surgery - Brain surgery to remove tumor requiring specialist from out of state/country, specialist doesn't have to waste time flying to different hospitals.
Surgery over, the specialist in his network connected RC lab takes a break, gets a gatorade. And gets ready for his next surgery in another part of the world.
At the remote hospital they hose down the Robot and get a fresh pack of instruments from the autoclave, restock the surgical theater and prep for an open heart surgery via another telepresence
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The thing is that it doesn't replace the annual salary of anyone. As I mentioned, it is rather unlikely that a hospital that has the requisite specialist on staff will go for a machine instead.
Nothing replaces being on site, and looking and touching the patient in medicine... and any hospital that has the specialist on staff has sufficient number of cases for that surgeon to operate on. Therefore, rather than eliminating surgical jobs, it would likely add some, by allowing a larger center to staff surgeons
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I worked on a network that was MPLS connected over the Verizon backbone, not the Intarwebs and my ping time from Washington DC to Los Angeles was 60ns. Playing Wow from my Comcast in DC to a West Coast server I never beat 120ns, and frequently double that.
60 ns? That's fucking miraculous.
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Exactly. Having a 60 ns ping to anything more than 9 meters (29.5 feet) away would be Nobel prize-worthy.
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The military and other organizations are working up shipping containers with these robots, so what if you're a highly paid specialist, and don't want to leave home, but want to offer your specialty to soldier's abroad, earthquake victims, people in Doctors without Borders countries but don't want to be shot at, or risk local diseases while offering the treatment.
You take the $1 mil robot, pack it in a shipping container, and load it on a boat, plane or truck to your disaster of choice.
Obviously if the cost
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Assumption of familiar internet protocol connection layer and crappy consumer-quality routing services. Straw man joke. Laughter.
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Until I can get reliably get pings low enough to play intercontinental TF2, I won't want anyone playing Operation Online in my guts, thanks.
http://www.cnbrandshop.com/ [cnbrandshop.com]
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How important are quick reflexes to performing surgery? Not that important, as far as I know.
Where art thou? (Score:1, Insightful)
London and NY? More likely, imagine NHS outsourcing to India, China, lowest bidder etc....
URGENT!!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Coming soon on alt.medicine.heart-surgery...
Ha folks, Sunesh here. I am surgeon at Chennai Instatute of Cardiology and needing to do some bypass. Pls to explaining difference between vain and artery. Patient is already opened, so reply quickly kthank's.
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I would love to see that comment modded funny... Sadly I think +5 (all too likely to happen) is more reasonable.
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"Sunesh here. I am surgeon at Chennai Instatute of Cardiology and needing to do some bypass. Pls to explaining difference between vain and artery. Patient is already opened so please do the needful and revert with same kthank's."
Fixed that for you.
More worried about Malware (Score:1)
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how long will it be before the malware infects one of these machines, maybe it will write web addresses on your incision.
Most likely it will either turn you into a zombie, or carve you up into spam.
WCPGW? (Score:1)
Imagine a DDOS on the hospital server while your brit doc is performing surgery on your heart/brain/penis!
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Imagine a hitman or terminator blowing up the hospital and trying to kill you while a team of hot lesbian *female doctors are scrubbing each other down as they prepare to perform your penis enlargement. Oh... I thought we were playing the what-if game..
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Imagine a hitman or terminator blowing up the hospital and trying to kill you while a team of hot lesbian *female doctors are scrubbing each other down as they prepare to perform your penis enlargement.
Michael Bay? Is that you?
But why long distance? (Score:1)
I've always wondered the benefits of long distance remote controlled operations. Wouldn't you much rather have a skilled surgeon standing over you performing with all of his/her senses, instead of some doctor in London?
Re:But why long distance? (Score:4, Funny)
Wouldn't you much rather have a skilled surgeon standing over you performing with all of his/her senses, instead of some doctor in London?
All of his/her senses? Hmmm... I think I'd rather they don't use their sense of taste, if that's all the same to everyone else.
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I find this a dubious argument personally, but it is one argument that can be made. A more likely situation is a surgeon, who is the be
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Think about enhanced reality. No shaky hands, no rubber gloves, surface-track a beating heart and the surgeon could operate as though it weren't even moving. Scale reality to 100x, and arteries become sewer pipes.
But yeah, I don't really understand the tele-part of this. It seems like it would only be useful in the scenario that a remote hospital has a state-of-the-art medical facility with robotic surgeons and for some reason doesn't have a heart surgeon on hand.
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But yeah, I don't really understand the tele-part of this. It seems like it would only be useful in the scenario that a remote hospital has a state-of-the-art medical facility with robotic surgeons and for some reason doesn't have a heart surgeon on hand.
There are specialties among heart surgery as with anything else. No hospital can afford to employ every kind of specialist full-time, even assuming there were enough of each to go around. The ability to operate remotely allows a hospital to obtain the help of a specialist from another hospital on short notice, as may be required in an emergency—even mid-surgery, in the even something unexpectedly goes wrong.
Even in the cases where the specialist would have had enough time to travel to the patient's ho
World first, hey? (Score:4, Informative)
From: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/innovation/episode7_essay1.html [pbs.org]
Telesurgery made international news on September 7, 2001, when the first transatlantic surgical procedure took place between New York City and Strasbourg, France at a distance of nearly 4,000 miles. Dubbed "Operation Lindbergh" after Charles Lindbergh's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic, the surgery was a landmark in experimental long distance telesurgery.
This was also reported in the BBC News, so the English really should know better: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1552211.stm [bbc.co.uk]
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I can't any link, but it wasn't too long after they robots operating on beating hearts, perfectly matching the heartbeat, that humans can't possibly do. What's new here?
Re:World first, hey? (Score:5, Insightful)
RTFH: This claims to be the world first heart surgery performed remotely. Your link is for a gall bladder removal.
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Maybe the parent post thought the gallbladder is part of the heart... never underestimate people's anatomical illiteracy ;)
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I think this would mostly be used for surgeons that are in the top 0.5% of their field.
Besides it also allows for you to have the services of say a "Dr Gregory House" without having to deal with his well know excellent social graces.
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I'd actually like to have a good bastard doctor like House. So far my experience has been with lots of residents, who -- when subjected to any sort of unknown/unexpected stuff that they don't have an instant answer to -- turn into clueless bastards.
I'd much rather have a clueful bastard, than a clueless bastard who is a bastard to mask his/her cluelessness.
BTW, this is all from recent experience at a big ten ED. I think by now even I would know how to do a less painful pelvic exam than that girl had done.
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Well, not quite... (Score:2)
Don't use Comcast (Score:4, Funny)
This will lead to robotics to do this (Score:3, Insightful)
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This was reported on BBC R4 today program yesterday morning.
The reason for the remote operation is because they're using X-rays. Previously, surgeons have had to wear heavy lead aprons while doing this. When these operations take 6 hours+ that's a physical demand it would be preferable they didn't have to suffer.
Tim.
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As soon as robots can perform multivariable analysis and perceive and identify objects. By then, we'll all be wired and the concept will be irrelevant.
Only on bypass (Score:3, Insightful)
If we're talking about heart surgery that happens while your heart is stopped, then a transatlantic session wouldn't be a problem, but 100 ms latency links plus moving parts are a bad combination.
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Depends. You could work around this quite easily by having a two-stage setup. The remote doctor controls a haptic rig and performs surgery on the model. The local surgeon, who isn't a specialist, follows has their rig follow the commands of the remote surgeon on the model, feels the same feedback, and then does the same operation on the real patient. The local surgeon is the one actually making the cuts, but the remote one gives them instructions a few seconds earlier on exactly how to do this step of t
Things you don't want to hear during a remote proc (Score:3, Funny)
Connection reset by peer.
No route to host.
%!@JQJA^NO CARRIER
"Installing service pack 3"
etc;
Re:Things you don't want to hear during a remote p (Score:4, Funny)
"I see you're writing a letter..."
or what about the sound windows makes when you plug in or unplug a usb device?
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..or receiving a letter from your ISP because you were downloading illicit wetware upgrades.
Hey, a guy can dream :)
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Not New York (Score:2)
I left my heart...
Do we really need this? (Score:2)
"Imagine a doctor in London performing surgery on your heart in New York!"
I'd rather not, frankly. I'd rather imagine my tax money being used to provide adequate local services such that this kind of tech was not needed.
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There's local, and there's local. A lot of the time, if you need an unusual non-emergency procedure on the NHS, they'll transfer you to a different hospital, often on the other side of the country, where there is an expert specialist. They could save a lot of money by letting a surgeon in Bristol operate on a patient in York, for example.
The biggest benefit, however, is going to be when they can get this kind of equipment into a slightly more portable form. Imagine an accident victim being able to go
And don't use Windows (Score:2)
Also, watch out for McAfee, as it might shut off vital processes.
First? More like first successful (Score:1)
The New York / London example (Score:2)
Is interesting... but perhaps a more humanitarian use could be the one that sees doctors from rich countries able to assist with delicate operations in poor countries where the needed specialists skills are simply too rare ?
As for all the "risks of the web" posts... my logic is much like with the side-effects of a drug that cures a terminal disease... when the other option is certain death - it's worth the risk.
Sounds like... (Score:2)
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not really since this will allow for DWB to pull off even more tricky operations. you still would need some local staff to do some of the more common things
1 remove critters from the OR
2 remove the folks with guns from the OR
3 basic stitching and bandaging
4 making sure the patient is at a correct level of consciousness
its not like they are at the level of "Please state the nature of the Medical Emergency"
Is this often necessary? (Score:1)
How often to surgeons need to do this? I'm definitely no expert, but I always thought majour surgery was generally planned a while in advance, which would allow time for travel. Is it only emergencies where this would be really useful?
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this is where TTL can get a whole new meaning (Score:3, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_to_live
I'm worried (Score:1)
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Liability? (Score:1)
BSOD (Score:1)
Says it all, no?
The reason for doing it remotely - X-rays (Score:2)
The whole operating remotely thing has interesting potential for allowing specialist surgeons to operate on patients from a distance and therefore make possible operations that might not have been possible for that patient.
However in this case the reason was because the patient was being x-rayed during the operation to allow the surgeon to see where the catheter was in the heart.
Repeated and prolonged exposure to x-rays, even low levels, is not a good thing so surgeons normally have to wear lead aprons to p
the real deal. (Score:1)
Don't imagine it (Score:2)
Imagine, instead, your insurance company not paying for an expensive local doctor but will pay for medical outsourcing from a surgical clearing house in India somewhere.
We didn't want to believe it when they commoditized IT services and shipped them overseas. Now they will want to do it with medicine.
Why remote? (Score:2)
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Image a doctor in India performing surgery... (Score:5, Insightful)
" Imagine a doctor in London performing surgery on your heart in New York!"
Yeah, that might happen. Or it might just go the way things already are moving and see some outsourcing to China and India. Which wouldn't have to be all that bad, since (a) you get Western hygiene and staff during the operation and while recovering, and you (may/might) get the benefit of a doctor who treats 10 patients a day and is really, really experienced. This is actually a good reason for Chinese people in The Netherlands to go to China for certain procedures, like operations on joints and other non-life threatening stuff. Whereas a Dutch doctor might treat a few patients a week with and never see arare complication, his Chinese colleague will treat a dozen a day and is likely to have handled that complication several times in the last month. And in this type of surgery, experience matters.
Where I see most use for this though, is to get an expert online for a very difficult surgery, who does the really tricky stuff then leaves the opening and closing procedures to the staff at hand. I think the military might be the biggest users for this type of machinery.
NY Docs *that* bad? (Score:2)
London to New York surgery too costly (Score:1, Informative)
London to New York surgery? That's not cost effective enough ! I think New Delhi-New York offers much better value proposition. Would you like this week special? Kidney transplant only $29.99. And they could have surgery pods in Walmart with direct connection to "top" offshore surgeons !!
Since no other MDs appear to be commenting... (Score:5, Informative)
Outsourced (Score:1)
First? Not according to Slashdot. (Score:2)
In 2008 a story was posted on slashdot [slashdot.org] about a woman getting brain surgery remotely in Calgary Alberta Canada. And here's a story in SciAm [scientificamerican.com] about remote surgery done across the Atlantic ocean between NY and Strasbourg France in 2001.
Imagine.... (Score:2)
"Imagine a doctor in London performing surgery on your heart in New York!"
];)
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Imagine a doctor in London performing surgery on your heart in New York!
Yes. Imagine, indeed. What could possibly go wrong?
From: l33t h4xxor Mesho
To: Daughter
Subject: Your father's surgery
Hi Michelle!
We hacked into your father's machine and we know who he is. We know he's having a remote heart surgery at 12:32pm.
We also happen to control a bot net of about 100,000 machines.
Kindly, forward 6 million dollars to account #432532511155 in Bank Xyz in Switzerland, or else, we will instruct all 100k machines to DDOS the hospital.
Yours truly,
Meshko
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From: Daughter
To: Mr. l33t h4xxor Mesho (by the way, is it Mesho or Meshko, you should really make up your mind.)
Subject: Your extortion demand
I am pleased to inform you that I have notified the hospital of the potential problem, and they have notified me that remote surgeries are done via a dedicated connection, not the public Internet. In light of this issue, however, they have assigned a doctor to this case. Good luck with your DDoS.
I have also contacted the FBI, who will be in contact with Swiss auth
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and they have notified me that remote surgeries are done via a dedicated connection, not the public Internet
You make a valid point, but, you also seem to have a lot more faith in hospitals being security conscious than I do :)
If it works, though (Score:2)
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If they're not, it'll become an expensive oversight very quickly. Security precautions are a whole lot cheaper than just one lawsuit over a botched procedure, especially if they were notified in advance that someone was threatening extortion and intended to try to cause a problem. The jury would throw them straight under the bus on that one.
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That's why the title of the story says "heart surgery". Your link is about a gallbladder removal.
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GP is French. To him it's all the same - they'll make pate out of anything.
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Isn't the point that excellent surgeons (often found in big cities) can perform operations in remote areas often enduring poorer quality medical equipment and professionals?
How does this solve the problem of on-site facilities and support?
The robot and its support team. The cardiac surgery unit. Nurses, assistant surgeons or full surgical back-up teams.
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Well, despite your intent you might be on to something.
Sometimes doctors 'invent' new procedures/techniques, and at that time they may be the ONLY person in the world qualified to perform that procedure.
So maybe a doc at a one of the big research hospitals has a life saving procedure, but you are stuck in podunk nowhere and can't be flown there in time, or as is common with some conditions can't be flown at all.
This technology could very well be all about sharing knowledge and experience, despite the actual