High-speed telecom services make trans-Atlantic surgery possible

September 26, 2001 (Computerworld)

Surgeons in New York have removed the gallbladder of a woman in France using high-speed telecommunications and sophisticated surgical robotics. The "telesurgery" is said to be the first time a complete operation was performed by surgeons nearly 4,000 miles away.
Code-named Operation Lindbergh, the 45-minute surgery was performed earlier this month on a 68-year-old woman in Strasbourg, France.
The project was the result of a partnership between researchers at the Institute for Research into Cancer of the Digestive System (IRCAD) in Strasbourg; the Paris-based France Telecom; and Computer Motion Inc., a medical robotics company in Goleta, Calif.
From New York, surgeons used Computer Motion's Zeus Robotic Surgical System to manipulate the surgical instruments on the patient in France.
The surgery was made possible because of an end-to-end high-speed fiberoptic link deployed by France Telecom. Drawing on its expertise in end-to-end high-speed services, France Telecom linked all the equipment, which included a video camera, robotic system and telephone by a trans-Atlantic high-bandwidth (10 megabits/sec.) fiberoptic network.
The link eliminated a problem that had previously prevented trans-Atlantic surgeries -- how to reduce the time delays inherent in long-distance transmissions. To be successful, the time delay could be no greater than 200 milliseconds, Wyrick said.
Through its fiberoptic link, France Telecom was able to reduce the time delay between the surgeon's movements and the return video image displayed on his screen to an average of 150 milliseconds, or 0.15 seconds, a speed almost imperceptible to the human eye, according to Tom Wyrick, vice president for Equant North America, a division of France Telecom. Before then, the time delay was a full second, which was too long to perform the surgery safely.
In other words, the doctor could see what he was doing in real time.
"The doctor was moving a [remote] control in his hand in New York that sent a signal to [France] to move the robotic arm. Then a camera in the patient photographs the doctor's movements and sends an image back across the Atlantic to New York," Wyrick said. "So when he moved the robotic hand [using the remote control] in New York, he saw it move in the patient in France."
Wyrick said France Telecom was able to eliminate the distance barrier between doctor and patient by delivering critical applications, such as broadcast-quality video, secure asynchronous transfer mode data transmission, IP telephony, videoconferencing and a LAN interconnection.
The patient was released from the hospital about 48 hours after surgery and returned to normal activity the next week, according to Dr. Jacques Marescaux from the European Institute of Telesurgery, who performed the surgery in New York.
France Telecom has fiberoptic connections in hundreds of cities in 40 to 50 countries, Wyrick said. The success of this surgery lays the foundation for the globalization of surgical procedures, he said.
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