A doctor in Florida has used a robot to remotely perform surgery on a cancer patient thousands of miles away in Africa.
Vipul Patel, the medical director of the Global Robotic Institute at Orlando's Advent Health, recently performed a prostatectomy, which removes part or all of the prostate, on Fernando da Silva of Angola, ABC News reported in an exclusive story from medical correspondent Dr. Darien Sutton on Tuesday.
Da Silva, 67, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in March, and in June, Patel cut out the cancer using transcontinental robotic telesurgery. The surgery was a success, according to ABC News.
Prostate cancer is very prevalent in Africa, Patel told the network, adding, “In the past, they really haven’t monitored it well or they haven’t had treatments.”
The doctor said this surgery was a long time coming.
“We’ve been working on this really for two years,” Patel said. "We traveled the globe, looking at the right technologies."
Da Silva was the first patient in a human clinical trial approved by the Food and Drug Administration to test this technology.
Surgeons have used a multimillion-dollar robot to operate on patients using “enhanced visuals and nimble controls” before, ABC News reported, but they are often near their patients when operating the machine.
Patel used fiber optic cables to test the technology at a long distance from his patient. “There was no perceptible delay in my brain,” the doctor said.
His surgical team was in the operating room with Da Silva just in case they had to jump in.
"We made sure we had plan A, B, C, and D. I always have my team where the patient is," the doctor said.
In case something went awry with the telecommunications, "the team would just take over and finish the case and do it safely,” he said.
Reflecting on the surgery, Patel called it “a small step for a surgeon, but it was huge leap for health care.”
He said the “humanitarian implications are enormous.”
"Internationally, obviously, there's so many underserved areas of the world,” the doctor said, adding that rural communities in the U.S. could also benefit from the technology.
He continued: "Emergency room physicians will have technology that can be remotely accessible to surgeons, maybe even in the ambulance, where people can get remote interventions if they can't make it to the hospital.”
Patel said he will submit the data he collected from the surgery to the FDA with the hopes that he can do more telesurgeries in the future.
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