A Chinese medical team has performed an innovative remote robotic eye surgery, using a 5G-connected robot to treat a patient over 4,000 kilometers away.
The surgical procedure, which involved a retinal injection, was carried out on Sunday by surgeons from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. They remotely controlled a robotic arm located in a hospital in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China.
With micrometric precision, the surgery represented a significant step in leveraging technology to reduce the gap in medical resources between developed coastal regions and remote areas.
After the robot placed the microscopic needle into the patient's eye in Urumqi, the surgeons in Guangzhou took remote control to guide it to the surface of the retina. They then punctured this inner eye membrane to a predetermined depth, after which the medication was injected.
The entire procedure lasted less than seven minutes. The network remained stable, the robot responded without any issues, and there was no vibration.
Subretinal injection is a meticulously delicate microsurgical technique used to save vision in disorders that cause blindness, such as submacular hemorrhage, the Xinhua news agency reported.
"This clinical surgery is a key step from feasibility to practicality in the field of high-precision remote ophthalmic surgery in China," said Lin Haotian, project director from the Zhongshan Ophthalmology Center of Sun Yat-sen University.
