Slashdot Mirror
Gall Bladder Removed In France By Doctor In New York
cybaea writes: "In this article, the BBC reports on the first successful major telesurgical operation. Doctors in the United States removed a gall bladder from a patient in eastern France by remotely operating a surgical robot arm." Note that this was using a "high speed optical link," not competing with email, viruses, or other things being sent on the Internet. Update: 09/19 17:05 PM GMT by T : Uh, that's "gall bladder," not "tumor." From this distance they look the same to me.
Maybe I'm just dumb or misinformed, but I've never heard a Gall Bladder reffered to as a "Tumor".
/. knows more than my high school Bio professor?
Maybe
I think this is funny. There is no mention of a Tumor in the article or the submitters comments, yet it appears as a headline. A gall bladder is an organ, not a tumor.
...will be Bill Gates remotely inserting XP down the throats of thousands of consumers. I expect the surgery will be successful, whether we like it or not.
What good is it if they cant play Quake while fragging gall bladders?!
a dedicated link is bad in that situation. One on One can get pretty boring after a while.
I don't want a doctor who can't tell the difference between a gall bladder and a tumor operating on me!
At any rate, this is very interesting news. I hope they use pretty strong crypto to protect the communications. This would give new meaning to Denial Of Service if the stream were interecepted and modified.
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
that the surgeon yelled out "First Incision!"
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I'll be really impressed when a doctor in Paris helps survivors of the WTC...
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
If someone performs a DDOS on a lot of major POPs PNAPs and it inturrupts communication and kills the patient is the script kiddie up for murder?
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Boy, a buffer overflow during that would be a bitch.
until the patient suddenly moves and the apparatus is unable to compensate like a present human being would.
No thanks, I'd rather suffer with my gall bladder, thanks.
Imagine if hackers (script kiddies anyway) got ahold of this thing. It'd put a whole new meaning on getting 'hacked up'
Don't Tread on Me
I can just hear all the surgeons begging their bosses to let them telecommute from home now.
load "linux",8,1
I mean, sure, the optical network isn't connected to the 'net *yet*. Just wait until the orderlies figure how to make a bridge, and load up counterstrike....
"Um, sorry ma'am, your husband didn't make it. The lag was too great, and those bastards kept ping flooding us. But don't worry, my clan and I will get them next time! D0ct3rz r00l!"
Here's a pic of the robot in action. Looks like that gall bladder was pretty big, or the frenchwoman isn't what I'd call "underweight".
Notice the three large arms sticking in? Gall Bladder surgery is usually arthroscopic. So, long distance surgery does have the drawback of more/bigger scars.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
But I would never go for this. Part of the advantage of having such a capable physician is that if anything goes wrong, he can take care of it. The robot arms restrict his options and make it more difficult to work in an emergency.
Not only that, but this involves a reliable high-speed connection. The only time this technology would be truly useful is if you were in the middle of nowhere and needed an operation. But if you're in the middle of nowhere, you'll never be able to get a reliable high-speed connection!
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
It seems that doctors in NYC would still be too busy with WTC related stuff to worry about French gall bladders/tumors. Or has it slowed down enough in the hospitals for doctors to do cool stuff like this?
The article refers to this article at Nature
Very interesting, this may enable for people in thrid world countries to have access to the best surgeons in the world. It may also allow operations on the ISS at some point. I'd expect to see developments where surgeons from multiple sites coordinate work on a single patient at a remote site.
They were probably competing with viruses of both kinds. You really have to have a sterile environment both over the network and in the operating room.
More bizarre thoughts:
Will doctors sue for carpal tunnel? Will doctors sue for carpal tunnel after performing remote surgeries on carpal tunnel patients? (The ultimate in irony)
Can doctors now prescribe medication remotely? And if so, can I just buy 10 different masks and walk in with each saying "Yea, 100 Vicodin to go please..."
Do the robot arms have bad handwriting as well?
Will the nurses now look like Seven of Nine and give me sponge baths?
Will dentist robots be bugging me now about how bad my brushing habits are, even though I never have cavities?
And finally, will all the script kiddies be hacking into those remote boob-job surgeries? I hope they get grossed out and short circuit their 31337 keyboards with vomit, cause it's not for the squeamish.
This surgery should be encouraging news for NASA.
They're is doing research along this same theme. They someday want robots to be able to be controlled either from the ground or the space station by a person wearing a VR suit. The human can see a 3d image of what the robot is working on and they're working on having the bot transmit some kind of feel (a sense of touch) back to the human. Advantage to this is the ability to make the robot fit into small or dangerous areas and not subjecting a live person to danger.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Just modify the version of Doom that allows you to kill processes and you can do both.
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This has so much opportunity for on-line sexual addictions; the doors to true "cybersex" are now open.
Transcript of a cybermasturbation:
"That's a little too gentle, now. Come on, bitch, a little more rough, eh?"
[crunch]
[falsetto screaming]
"Bitch? What?"
Perhaps not just yet...
Yeah ! Those emails and virusses are major bandwidth killers ! Because of them, it takes ages to download mp3s and AVIs on my 56k modem. Must be. Down with email !
How do you sue for malpractice? In France or the US of A?
~Sean
Make sure the tech team at your local French hospital apply all patches to the communication software or else you might get operated on by a script kiddie from China.
I don't care what internet this runs through, I want a real doctor in the room with me.
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
I bet the brittish can't wait until this hits dentistry.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
DOCTOR: how r j00 feeling?
PATIENT: ok
DOCTOR: duz this hurt?
PATIENT: ouch
DOCTOR: roflmao
PATIENT:
(PATIENT signed off at 08:36 AM EST)
DOCTOR: hello?
DOCTOR: r u there?
DOCTOR: kewl
(DOCTOR signed off at 08:38 AM EST)
You owe me a lifesaver with your closing h4x0r phrase. I was balancing it on my tongue while reading and spit it out laughing at that point. Kudos.
------
Let me give you the lowdown
Ghoulish removal of Gaul's Gall-bladder.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Can you imagine doing this for knee surgery, or something else that doesn't require general anesthesia? I don't know about you, but I don't think I could deal with watching a robot operate on me.
Think about how you get charged for every... little... thing... when you have to go to the hospital.
And now you have to pay for all this too? Ack! Do they have an attachment on that arm to allow the Billing Dept to remotely remove your wallet while they're at it?
'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'
I thought the whole point behind going to a specific doctor for a procedure was that he's far more knowledgeable about it than anyone nearby.
What do you expect, a brain surgery to be performed the first time this technology is actually used? You have to start somewhere. A standard procedure of taking out a gall bladder is a good way of proving that telesurgery is possible.
You think that they will test the system with a quadruple bypass? Of course they will start with a more routine operation. The idea in the end is that a very specialized surgeon in NY could operate on some kid in Nairobi where doctors may not have expertise with his condition, and access would be possible.
If the alternative to the robot operation is no treatment, I think I'll take the risk.
Most of these comments on here are dumb as hell. This is a one-to-one connection, no bandwith issues, no script-kiddies. If you don't have something intelligent to say, shut the f*ck up.
Sorry...
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
I mean, just when the doctor manoeuvres the arm to remove the bladder, its hit a zillion times with some bizarre M$ concoction, and a warbled command is sent to the arm in Europe. I shudder to imagine the consequences.
Americans would do anything do get to know French women more intimately ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So what happens if the robot arm fails mechanicaly, like a busted ball bearing or something??
Just wondering.
pressure/grep
Microsoft Fucking Sucks!! Up The Penguins!!
then the possibilities are limitless.
Check out: http://www.fu-fme.com/
Or would you sue the connection provider? The legal hassle would be horrendous. One side trying to prove that the other screwed up. Christ it would go on forever.......sue the creator of the arm (if the arm didn't have AI)?
OK, I am talking of arms having AI so it's time for my medicine.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
If you figure 3000 miles both ways, then we're talking a minimum 0.03 seconds of lag. When you figure all the overhead, plus you don't get perfect speed, that could be a 0.1 seconds. That seems pretty significant if you are doing delicate surgery. It would be even worse if it was across the world.
As John Carmack once said, "The speed of light sucks".
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
>> Yes. But no one would use the Internet for this type of thing anyway. <<
:-)
Hackers can bust into just about anything if the circumstances are right.
I can imaging an arm coming out of somebody's ear, and them yelling, "Those d*** hackers!"
However, that may be a boon to basketball: slam-dunks without ever jumping. White men have a chance now
Table-ized A.I.
Detected 1200.048 MHz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 2392.06 BogoMIPS
Memory: 512972k/524224k available (1215k kernel code, 10864k reserved, 473k data, 220k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Buffer-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
CPU: Before vendor init, caps: 0183f9ff c1c7f9ff 00000000, vendor = 2
CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 256K (64 bytes/line) CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) processor stepping 02
...good thing you're not the surgeon then.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Heh, I thought it was funny...
Free Gaul!
some Mindstorms hacker builds one of these out of Lego?
And in what country do you sue in when there is a malpractice case? this could be fun to follow.
This will be really useful for the Antarctic population, given the track record for their surgeons becoming ill during their tenure.
As with any development, you try it first on the simple case to prove that it can be done. Once you have the kinks worked out, then you go for the more complicated stuff. Simple Engineering 101.
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
for rampaging killbots to perform surgery on me without the errors that human intervention providers. Who needs a doctor on the other end of the world when the killbots will do it for ya, faster and better!
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
That's not a tumor! That's a Gall Bladder!
So what does overseas surgery mean for malpractice claims?
-the Hun
I'm a Tasty-vore. If it's Tasty, I'll eat it.
...no, it is not a tumor!!!
This tech seems pretty cool, but I don't know how much I'd trust it. What if a hacker got into the network somehow and started toying around with my innards? I don't think I'd like that.
~ now you know
This is a first, and it's a prototype, and I wouldn't want my gall bladder removed by a guy an ocean away drinking coffee, worrying about a building falling over... BUT...
Someday I may be in the Arctic...
Or on a plane
Or in space
Or whereever... the point isn't *how* it was done, the point is that we *can* do it...
WhatEVA
I don't think the nurses or other doctors were all that impressed.
"Look at him, he's totally camping the pancreas!"
Woot w00t w007.
Second. Your statement should have read "Gall bladder surgery is usually Laproscopic". Arthroscopy is using a laprascope to look at a joint (note: arthro = join. i.e. arthritis =joint inflamation). And yes, looking at that picture, it WAS laprascopic. I've assisted (i'm a surgical PA) on numerous laprascopic operations, and those look EXACTLY like the ones i've used. Nothing really unusual from the pic.
It would be nice for critical applications, such as surgery, critical teleconferencing, ... downloading KDE 2.X..., to pay a couple bucks (X 10) and be on a dedicated route to the other end. Over the Internet, I mean. For the vast majority of Internet usage the passive routing is fine but for a small percentage, it is too happenstance to be trusted. What would it take (besides Internet][, I mean) to have a dedicated route option?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
One word: Macros!
What were you expecting?
"Mike broke the Hub-ble. Mike broke the Hub-ble"
Don't mark me down if you don't get it. Yes, it relates to the story.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
I sure hope it's more accurate than some of the speech recognition tools I've used.
This would be really good if they could setup the system in something the size of an ambulance so people can be fixed up without having to make them endure a helicopter or ambulance ride to the nearest hospital. So is 802.11 ready for this?
Fellow slashdotter me, I had mine taken out less than two weeks ago and now I'm sporting 4 healing holes in my abdomen. Lucky me.
Pandora
... Gaul bladder?
It said in the article that the doctor was pulling a 200ms ping, and that the maximum acceptable latency was 330ms.
Now I'm not trying to troll or be funny here, but that's a pretty lousy ping, especially for a direct fiber link.
I don't know about anyone else, but Quake is damned near unplayable with a 330 ping. We're talking about life and death situations here... If I can't accurately rail someone with that kind of latency, I certainly wouldn't want to be trying to move my scalpel without knicking the femoral artery.
When this moves to the internet.. What about packet loss.. or some jackass on your network using morpheus.. "DAMN PACKET LOSS!" Well, he won't need that kidney.
DOH!
This is an absurd abuse of technology to further a doctor's career. There is no chance that this surgery was in the best interest of the 68 year old patient. Gall bladder surgery is reasonably common and could have been performed by any of a number of local doctors. This was *all* about getting a publication - which is sick. And I don't want to hear about how this technology will revolutionize anything, because the amount of logistical preparation needed on both sides will always make it easier to just fly a specialist to the scene and have her/him operate on the patient.
The best quote from the article...
"The time delay between the surgeon's movements and the return video image displayed on screen was less than 200 milliseconds. The estimated safe lag time is 330 ms."
Estimated safe lag? As determined by who? The NIST? The AMA? Probably the doctor, immediately after hearing that the time delay was 200ms.
-Rothfuss
The most compelling thing is that this surgery was of the "minimally-invasive" variety. That is, the incision was only about 1/4".
I argue that the market for a transatlantic surgery pales in comparison to having the exact same set of surgical stations within a few feet of one another. The real value is the minimally-invasive part of the equation, rather than the fact that they made a gee-whiz surgery over thousands of miles.
I'll probably get modded off-topic here, but back in the QuakeWorld days, I got pretty good on dial-up. When I got a fat pipe (college LAN), it took me a couple weeks to regain that. I was so tuned into anticipating the moves and compensating for the lag that I had on a modem that without it, I looked like a spaz.
Or is it Gaul?
This has already been done. IIRC open heart surgery was preformed on a guy in an Oriental country (I forget which) over the Internet2 by someone at KUMC (I believe it was KUMC). I saw that on Discovery this Spring. I don't have details for you. Hopefully that will be enough to find it yourself.
First things first - they don't just decide to use this sort of technology without the patient's volunteering or informed consent - not doing this has a nasty habit of bringing out LAWSUITS.
And yes, they could've gotten local doctors to do the procedure - gall bladder removal is a safe, time-tested, and relatively easy procedure - which is exactly why it was used to test the new technology. As a previous poster mentioned, you don't want to test this stuff out on ultra-delicate brain surgery!
"This is an absurd abuse of technology to further a doctor's career."
Well, this is an absurd and ignorant statement made without any real basis other than your over-emotional opinion.
"This was *all* about getting a publication - which is sick."
As opposed to what? Please tell me another way in which new systems, technology, and techniques can be put out for scrutiny by peers in the fields WITHOUT publishing research articles? And by they way - they do test this stuff first on non-humans. They state testing robotic surgery systems on non-living animal organs, then move on to animal surgery and only after a LOT of testing do they THINK of testing it on actual patients - you see, I follow this stuff, and know what's roughly going on in the field.
"because the amount of logistical preparation needed on both sides will always make it easier to just fly a specialist to the scene and have her/him operate on the patient."
Do the words "testbed" mean anything to you?? New technologies are ALWAYS initially more expensive inefficient until they are developed, refined, and deployed properly. The first automobiles were considered to be far less efficient and reliable than horses - now tell me what you went to work with this morning? I guess ENIAC should never have been developled - it was more cost effective to just have more PEOPLE do the military ballistics calculations by hand I guess...
I also love the statement about ALWAYS be easier to fly someone - care to qualify that with any proof?? Can you see into the future with 20/20 vision? Once systems are deployed, cost comes down. That makes these systems economical for areas in less developed parts of the world (Middle-east, Africa, some South American countries, Antarctica), and battlefield operations. Saying you don't want to hear about the good applications of this tech shows that you refuse to acknowledge any good points at all and is a dishonest method of evaluating anything.
"Estimated safe lag? As determined by who? The NIST? The AMA? Probably the doctor, immediately after hearing that the time delay was 200ms."
Another pointless, baseless insult. Determined by who indeed - determined by people with more knowledge and experience in the field than YOU obviously.
Once again we have the typical Slashdot science article over-reaction - over-emotional baseless claims made by people that probably have poor knowledge in the fields being discussed.
Kevin Christie
Neuroscience Program
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Now the procedure is available as a download. Please use the mirrors.
These preliminary tests, of course, show that remote mutual masturbation could be a reality within two years!
not a tumah!
That's working under the assumption that there are flights to Europe at the last minute.
As events last week pointed out so well, you can't assume anything anymore.
While the usefulness can be debated, it's breakthroughs like this that help restore faith in human beings, after witnessing the harm they can cause.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
"Yes, touch the ferret."
Can this device be used to remotely remove
the posts of the infamous Jon Katz from
Slashdot so readers don't vomit all over
their desks at work?
Thank you.
http://www.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/ph/ns.uiuc.edu?Query=K evin+Christie
alias: kwchrist
name: christie kevin william
pretty_name: kevin william christie
first_name: kevin
middle_name: william
last_name: christie
email: kwchrist@students.uiuc.edu
curriculum: grad2
phone: (217) 244-2888
office_phone: (217) 244-2888
address: 320 morrill hall, mc 118
: 505 s goodwin
: urbana, il 61801
office_address: 320 morrill hall, mc 118
: 505 s goodwin
: urbana, il 61801
title: predoc fellow, fellowships
: predoc fellow, school of molecular and cellular biology admin ofc
department: fellowships
type: person phone student
...can warn the medical team on the other side of the ocean if it was running out of surgical tape or other key materials.
Duct tape can easily replace a empty surgical tape dispenser. Rubber cement, Swingline staplers and binder clips are pretty common, so the robot will be able to refill with the "next best thing" in case of a supply shortage.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Even people in rural areas can benefit, sinec most local hospital cannot afford to keep all of the specialists they'd need for every possible emergency.
"Love is never saying you're too proud." -Tonic
It could be that laproscopic surgery is basically done over a video link anyway, as opposed to lancing a boil, which is typically done using the naked eye. Since the laproscopic surgeon is just looking at a video monitor and manipulating the surgical apparatus through mechanical linkages, the leap to telesurgery is much smaller. It doesn't really matter if the mechanical linkages and video feed end on another continent or not.
Call me when you read that headline.
Actually is is very useful. Many small rural hospitals do not have the money to hire the best surgeons, however a group of hospitals in conjungtion with a teaching hospital could purchase this equipment and move it from hospital to hospital as needed and the surgeons at the teaching hospital could perform the surgery remotely. A "Lap Chole" as discribed in the article in usually out-patient surgery. Some instead of traveling hundreds for miles with a day or more lost time this could be done at the patients local hospital. Everyone is helped. BTW, you don't need much more that a few ISDN lines for all the information flowing back and forth.
This is very real and is in fact a very economical way of doing mimimally invasive surgery.
Actually, IT IS for civilian use. Most surgery in war zones is not done endoscopically. Combat surgery is done "Open" (ie, use a scalpel and move internal tissues around. While there may be cool applications like warzones and space, the real will be for rural hospitals.
It is important everyone to really read the article. The was the 1st "trans-oceanic" telesurgery not the 1st telesurgery.
How exactly is this technology supposed to benefit anyone? Do doctors spend a significant amount of their time flying to remote hospitals? Or is this just technology in search of a problem?
Maybe this opens up competition like the electrical utilities have done. The same hospital provides the service, but now you can bid for the cheapest surgeon on eBay.
// Alan Porter
Doctors in the United States removed a gall bladder from a patient in eastern France by remotely operating a surgical robot arm.
What we need is remote control firefighters, that can enter burning buildings and put out fires from the safety of the command center a couple blocks away. A much harder problem, due to the necessity to climb stairs and all, but maybe you could make a helicopter version which could break through the upper story windows?
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
The was the first "TRANS-OCEANIC" telesurgery. Read the article more carefully.
Telesurgery, while relatively new, is done a a number of centers in the US and Europe.
It is an amazingly effective method to bring surgical expertise to areas that don't have such expertise.
It actually is not as expensive as as people might think. IN the long run this will be one of the most inexpensive ways of performing many surgical procedures.
(In a non-insurance-dominated free market, people could pay for what they wanted, which would probably include cost-effective non-bureaucratically-oriented structures like that. And in a socialized-medicine market, you'd probably have either lots of doctors, if you believe its proponents, or not enough money for experimental technology, if you believe its opponents, or less restriction on what the medical service can do as long as it saves the service money.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's the only surgery I've ever had and it was a breeze - I walked home within 24 hrs
The fun part was when the doc removed the drain he'd left in a few days later - he said "this may feel a bit funny and it might hurt" - hit hurt like hell, but it felt ssooo wierd (all that stuff moving inside you as it came out) I couldn't stop laughing even though it hurt so much
Ok, I can see doing this for a proof of concept [perhaps that's what this was] but ..
1. Dont they have doctors in eastern France?
2. In countries where their is sufficent technology [hi speed fiber, tecks to support the robot], would it just be cheaper to have a doctor, say, at the hospital? There seem to be more doctors than lawyers where I live.
3. Doctors need training in this, that means they charge more, plus the cost of robot.
4. What happens in a brown-out?
5. Robots don't seem to be able to make a car better, why should they be able to fix me better, or perhaps I'm just missing the whole point of this....
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
I guess they had to come up with a way to make surgery more expensive. Science marches on!