A historic surgery was performed on a patient in Athens, as a Greek doctor performed it while they were in China, 8,000 kilometers away.
The operation (radical prostatectomy) was performed on a patient in Athens who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and was performed with robotic machines utilizing the capabilities of telemedicine from Wuhan, China. This is the professor of Medicine and director of the Urology Clinic at the University Hospital of Patras, Evangelos Liatsikos.
Speaking to ERT, Mr. Liatsikos, who today will perform surgery with the same technology on a patient in Athens while he will be in Patras, spoke of a technological development" with "being somewhere so far away and standing in a room with your tie and operating on a person".
As he explained, "in Athens there was a team that if something extraordinary happened – such as an earthquake like the Venezuelan one – could take care of the patient."
"The most shocking thing was that there was no delay, as if I was next to him. This coupling is done with dedicated network lines. The Chinese have secured the China-Frankfurt route and we from there to Athens," added the Greek doctor, who commented that "now the satellite is lagging behind, now we are doing it with a fiber optic connection. The technology of robotics existed, now the machines can be supported by networks."
"We used to see these things in the movies. The logic of telemedicine with robotic machines is to be able to train surgeons without traveling and operating remotely. And this is just the beginning," he added.
ClosureAs for the patient, Mr. Liatsikos said that "he was fully aware and very excited because he pioneered".
The professor of Medicine estimated that surgeries like the one he did from China "will be done more often. This process has started timidly in the last year, but you will see this very often in the future. Until now, telemedicine was diagnostic, now it is becoming therapeutic. The logic behind the robotic machines being built by the Americans was for the doctor to operate on a battlefield but this could not be done due to connectivity, now it is a completely spectacular situation."
Mr. Liatsikos stressed, finally, that for these operations "medical knowledge is required and Greece has doctors of the highest level and technology has no borders, what exists abroad also exists in our country".
protothema.gr
