A King’s College London professor of surgery and urology has used remote robotic surgery for the first time in the UK to complete a prostate removal on a patient more than 2,400 kilometres away.
Working from the London Clinic, Professor Prokar Dasgupta used a console to guide a robot equipped with a 3D camera and three additional instrument arms to remove Paul Buxton’s cancerous prostate at St Bernard’s Europort, the only hospital on Gibraltar.
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The surgery was performed with a brief lag of 0.06 seconds between surgeon and patient, with secure high-speed fibre optics, as well as a back-up link, connecting the two. An on-site clinical team was also on hand at St Bernard’s to step in, just in case of a connection failure.
Describing the ‘milestone’ experience, Professor Dasgupta, a leading urological surgeon who has performed robotic surgery countless times to remove prostate cancer, while being in the same operating room as the patient, said that it felt ‘almost as if I was there’.
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For Buxton, a transport company owner who moved to the British overseas territory more than 40 years ago, taking part in the surgery was a ‘no brainer’ and the chance to become ‘a part of medical history. A lot of people actually said to me: “You’re not going to do it are you?” But I thought, I’m going to give something back here.’
A pioneering medical and technological breakthrough, remote robotic surgery is hoped to provide improved healthcare solutions for patients who, like Buxton, live in remote locations with limited medical facilities – sparing the time, expense and inconvenience of travel for more complex treatment options.
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‘This gives us the opportunity to treat patients in remote areas and smaller communities by literally being able to take the best surgeon anywhere,’ said Professor Dasgupta. ‘I think it is going to be very, very exciting. The humanitarian benefit could be significant.’
‘We are proud of Prokar’s long-standing commitment to driving surgical innovations using the latest medical technologies to break down barriers to treatment and improve the quality of care we provide to patients across the globe,’ said Professor Sebastien Ourselin, head of the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences at King’s College London.