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UK Docs Perform First Remote-Control Heart Surgery
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!"
Gives new meaning to ping loss...
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.
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.
London and NY? More likely, imagine NHS outsourcing to India, China, lowest bidder etc....
with malware popping up in fridges and ATM's, how long will it be before the malware infects one of these machines, maybe it will write web addresses on your incision.
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
Imagine a doctor in London performing surgery on your heart in New York!
Imagine a DDOS on the hospital server while your brit doc is performing surgery on your heart/brain/penis!
Everybody uses broad generalizations.
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?
From: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/innovation/episode7_essay1.html
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
Well, that and how many other nurses and doctors, a *clean* operating theater, a first-rate hospital, an amazing supply system and so on. Not quite a "robotic operation", quite yet. But, still, grats!
Ooh boy, the patient just flatlined! Wait.. nevermind, lagspike. Well, we better be careful- I hear this Comcast service can cost you an arm an a leg.
My webcomic
Stupid LPBs and their lame lag kills.
Simply put, they are building the machinery to allow the cutting, but the next step will be to replace the physical ppl. What that translate into, a guaranteed job USE to be a medical doc. The future says no.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
How long until its outsourced to China to cut costs?
Connection reset by peer.
No route to host.
%!@JQJA^NO CARRIER
"Installing service pack 3"
etc;
I left my heart...
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
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?
"I see you're writing a letter..."
or what about the sound windows makes when you plug in or unplug a usb device?
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
"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.
..or receiving a letter from your ISP because you were downloading illicit wetware upgrades.
Hey, a guy can dream :)
If they use windows, after every hip replacement, kidney transplant or other hardware modification, you'll have to reboot the system.
Also, watch out for McAfee, as it might shut off vital processes.
My webcomic
They tried this back in 1867. The doctor would pass his instructions by telegraph out to the coast, where someone would use semaphore flags out to a ship, where a spotter would interpret to an operator of an all-brass, steam-powered robot, through in intricate system of valves and gear shifts. It was a failure, after the spotter had to look up the letter P, and failed to relay the command "STOP" while the robot was sawing through the patient's chest. It was all the way through to the operating table by the time the command was received. Moral of the story? Lag sucks, but human error kills.
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.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's not a world first. There has been a transatlantic surgery ("ablation de la vésicule biliaire") in September 2001 between New York and Strasbourg. Full disclosure: some of my France Telecom colleagues that were part of the team had planned to visit WTC the 12th September.
See here.
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.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
in case it wasn't obvious. Do you get it now?
'Doctors Without Borders' is going to be giving up their domain sooner than they anticipated...
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 removal.
Hello, my name is Chandaravanaravanra from India.
Our team of surgeons can do this cheaper muchly for you, yes?
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?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_to_live
The *Boink boink boink* sound you get when you finish a game of Solitaire?
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I just hope the Internet connection and electricity on both sides don't accidentally vanish. The more I think about this innovation, the more I get worried about possible outcomes of some piece of communication or electricity going awry. No, I don't fancy being a patient of such a contrivance.
So who're they going to sue if the thing goes offline? Should all network engineers for major medical facilities ask for larger risk remuneration, or just quit their jobs now?
Says it all, no?
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 protect themselves during an operation like this. That get's pretty knackering after a few hours. By operating from another room the surgeon could be shielded better, while not getting tired out by the weight of protective clothing.
All in all a really interesting operation.
And not a death panel in sight :)
Paul Leader
....... carrier lost. is the real deal.
Track your fitness and strength gains with www.trackmytraining.net
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.
Imagine a cheap outsourced doctor in India hired in by your HMO for your surgery.
So does anyone know what the advantage of doing the procedure via remote control would be? I mean, if it works fine with the doctor in the room, why another layer of abstraction? Seems as though complications that could arise during surgery would discourage this sort of thing.
" 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.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
I doubt that trans-atlantic surgery would ever catch on. Remote surgeries in little burgs, maybe.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I can see it now!. Pop up ( Do you really want to cut here) or you have been redirected, this Ad brought to you by republic of china. or worse still Blue screen of death.
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 !!
"Imagine a doctor in London performing surgery on your heart in New York!"
I did imagine. And it cost me much less than if a NY surgeon was involved.
That's why it will/won't happen.
This may sound like a winner now, but just wait until they start outsourcing your surgeries to sweat shops in China.
No wonder medical care is so expensive. Is there only one heart surgeon in the world? The whole medical/pharmaceutical industry is long overdue for an enema IMO. Time to democratize medicine.
Hope is the currency of fools
Maybe not heart surgery but robotic surgery is OLD news in the Great White North:
http://www.lhsc.on.ca/About_Us/LHSC/Media_Room/Media_Releases/2003/january17.htm
We've been doing it since 2003.
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 maintain their specialization. Remote control would allow a hospital to draw on the the expertise of a much wider variety of specialists than they themselves can staff, even if they limit the operations to a radius of 20ms ping (say 200 miles away).
... to the term 'being hacked'...
Now even your surgery can be outsourced to India.
In 2008 a story was posted on slashdot about a woman getting brain surgery remotely in Calgary Alberta Canada. And here's a story in SciAm about remote surgery done across the Atlantic ocean between NY and Strasbourg France in 2001.
STFU about slashdot bias.
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.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
"Imagine a doctor in London performing surgery on your heart in New York!"
];)
Regards;
Scary totally paranoid scenario: outsource surgeries...
This is a major technical innovation, enabling people out of the jurisdiction to do the surgery and avoid the consequences if they kill the patient. With blind signature, we can even ensure that the surgeon is completely anonymous! The stream controlling your surgery could be an Indian doctor, a 6 year old girl in Thailand, a robot in china, or just a pipeline of numbers from random.com
So if ISPs get their way and charge more for certain types of traffic.. I wounder how much the surcharge will be. Do you think they will have a negotiated rate for Health Insurance providers ?
News flash! U.S. health care costs drop dramatically as patients discover they can hire overseas doctors to do remote surgery!
.... then comes comcaste shutting them down in the middle of it 'cause they were using too much bandwidth downloading the streaming images... thanks fer lis'nin' seekertom