A team of ophthalmologists at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, succeeded in performing the world’s first remote robotic retinal surgery, which included injecting a drug into the eye of a patient in a hospital in Urumqi, about 4,200 kilometers away from the surgeons. The operation took less than seven minutes, according to the official China Daily website.
The medical team used an advanced robotic system based on the fifth generation network that was developed locally. The robot inserted the fine needle into the patient’s eye, while the doctors supervised its directing remotely with high accuracy to deliver the medicine to the targeted area under the retina.
This type of surgery aims to treat eye diseases that cause blindness, and to enable patients in remote areas to obtain advanced treatment despite the limited number of specialized doctors.
The operation was led by Dr. Lin Haotian, Director of the Zhongshan Ophthalmology Center at the university, stressing that this achievement represents an advanced step in expanding the use of robotic surgery techniques and artificial intelligence in the medical field, especially in areas far from major health centers.
This development comes at a time when telemedicine and artificial intelligence technologies are rapidly expanding, enhancing opportunities to improve the quality of health care and deliver it over long distances efficiently and safely.
