On September 7, 2001, a 68-year-old woman in Strasbourg, France, had her gallbladder removed by surgeons, operating via computer from New York. It was the first complete telesurgery procedure performed by surgeons nearly 4,000 miles away from their patient.
In New York, Marescaux teamed up with surgeon Michel Gagner to perform the his toric long-distance operation. A high-speed fiber-optic service provided by France Telecom made the connection between New York and Strasbourg. The two surgeons controlled the instruments using an advanced robotic surgical system, designed by Computer Motion Inc, that enabled the procedure to be minimally invasive. The patient was released from the hospital after about 48 hours and regained normal activity the following week.
The high-speed fiber-optic connection between New York and France made it possible to overcome a key obstacle to telesurgery——time delay. It was crucial that a continuous time delay of less than 200 milliseconds be maintained throughout the operation, between the surgeons movements in New York and the return video （from Strasbourg） on hisscreen. The delay problem includes video coding, decoding and signal transmission time.
France Telecoms engineers achieved an average time delay of 150 milliseconds. "I felt as comfortable operating on my patient as if I had been in the room," says Marescaux.
The successful collaboration among medicine, advanced technology, and tele communications is likely to have enormous implications for patient care and doctor training. Highly skilled surgeons may soon regularly perform especially difficult operations through long distance procedures. The computer systems used to control surgical move ment can also lead to a breakthrough in teaching surgical techniques to a new generation of physicians. More surgeon~in training will have the opportunity to observe their teachers inaction in telesurgery operating rooms around the world.
展开
