Robotic surgery has dramatically improved surgical precision, nevertheless it could also help surgeons treat people on the opposite side of the world. A surgeon in Florida has now used a robot to remove a simulated brain clot from a cadaver in Scotland, with near-instant feedback across 4,000 miles.
Within the US, someone has a stroke roughly every 40 seconds, totally greater than 795,000 cases annually and costing the health system greater than $56 billion annually, in accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ischemic strokes block blood flow to the brain and account for 87 percent of cases. These strokes often require an emergency surgery called a thrombectomy to remove the offending blood clot. Nonetheless, the procedure requires highly expert specialists and advanced imaging setups, which implies they’re only available to a fraction of stroke patients.
That might soon change due to a breakthrough experiment carried out by doctors on either side of the Atlantic. Ricardo Hanel, a neurosurgeon on the Baptist Medical Center in Jacksonville, Florida used a surgical robot to perform a thrombectomy on a human cadaver on the University of Dundee in Scotland.
“To operate from the US to Scotland with a 120 millisecond (blink of a watch) lag is actually remarkable,” Hanel said in a press release.
“Tele neurointervention [robotic surgery at a distance] will allow us to diminish the gap and further our reach to supply one of the impactful procedures in humankind.”
The robotic system utilized in the experiment was developed by Lithuanian company Sentante. The system translates a surgeon’s hand movements into wonderful robotic control of the usual tools utilized in the procedure. It also provides haptic feedback, giving the surgeon the identical sensations they might feel if doing the procedure by hand.
This feedback makes it possible for the operators to acknowledge subtle but crucial cues—comparable to the softness of clot material or the transition into more delicate vessels within the brain. Study leader Iris Grunwald on the University of Dundee also used the robot to perform a thrombectomy on a cadaver from a distant site inside the same hospital, as a precursor to the transatlantic experiment.
“It’s remarkable to feel the identical wonderful control and resistance through a robotic interface as during a live procedure,” she said within the press release. “Sentante’s robotic platform redefines what is feasible in endovascular treatment today.”
The technology could greatly expand access to this life saving procedure, because it only requires a medical skilled trained to achieve access to the patient’s arteries before a neurosurgical specialist can take over remotely. The robotic system will also be wheeled to a patient’s bedside inside minutes—a critical capability provided that every minute counts in terms of strokes.
“For an ischemic stroke, the difference between walking out of hospital and a lifetime of disability will be just two to 3 hours,” Edvardas Satkauskas, co-founder and CEO of Sentante, said within the press release.
“Today, patients are sometimes transported long distances to achieve one among a limited variety of thrombectomy centers. With Sentante, the specialist involves the patient over a secure network and performs all the procedure remotely—with the identical tactile feel and control they’ve on the bedside.”
After all, the experiments took place on cadavers fairly than living patients, and bridging the gap could still be tricky. Also, a reliable web connection—plus good backup plans should it fail—will likely be as crucial as a easily operating robot.
But these experiments suggest that your probabilities of surviving a stroke may soon not be reliant on how close you’re to the closest specialist hospital.