Los Angeles – A Surgery Via Satellite
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Here in Los Angeles delicate surgical procedures are taking place. But there are no operating tables in this center.
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For years surgeons have been trying to work out how to operate remotely. It would be crucial if an astronaut needed surgery, and would allow specialist surgeons to operate on patients continents away.
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In the control room an operation is being set up. Doctors are about to operate on a patient thousands of miles away, and NASA is in charge of communications.
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After several years of research, they will finally be able to experience a new and revolutionary surgical technique: surgeons will operate, from Los Angeles, via satellite, on a patient in Milan.
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Because this technology isn’t perfected yet, it can’t be tested on humans. So the patient is a pig.
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Surgery performed using a computer will control a robot with a scalpel.
[00:45:08:06] – Interview with Doctor Alberto Rovetta, Specialist in robotics, Milan
20 years ago, when we spoke about robots, everybody said “oh no, it’s not possible” now we have in the world more than 100,000 robots, like a big city, working places, why not in the hospitals?
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An artificial brain controls the robot’s actions. The robot itself acts as an intermediate. It is the surgeon, sitting in the NASA laboratory in Los
Angeles, who will guide his metal hand, from some 10,000 km away.
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A camera on a fibre optic cable is fixed onto the mechanics of the robot arm,
so the surgeon can observe the different phases of the procedure.
First step: cut the belly of the animal.
The operation itself is a liver biopsy; a common surgical procedure, but one that requires extreme precision.
[00:45:57:16] - Interview with Dr. H. Bejczy, Director of JPL – NASA, Los Angeles
You can extend these capabilities to far remote places where you cannot send surgeons or it might be very expensive to send them there.
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This is a moment of great emotion, when the robot takes us into the stomach of the animal. It is then ready for surgery.
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At this stage the risks are enormous. Given the distance from Los Angeles to Milan, it takes between one and two seconds for the robot to respond to the surgeon's orders.
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This is sufficient time for a muscle to contract, which would be disastrous for the operation.
[00:46:33:15] Interview (In Italian) with Dr. Luciano Angelini, Surgeon,Hospital Umberto, Rome,
The issue of the signal delay of surgical action still needs to be addressed, because of the distance that separates us from Milan.
This is an issue which could affect the use of this manner of surgery in the future, particularly with regard to the space station Freedom.
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The scientists still need to perform roughly 300 experiments like these, before finally testing this technique on humans.
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And it will take more than five years of research before this technology is reliable enough to be used regularly.
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The astronauts, meanwhile, will have to wait until early 2015, before they can enjoy the care of a robot surgeon.
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