For the first time, a breast cancer surgery was carried out remotely. A doctor was on site, with the patient. The other was 900 kilometers away in a different country.
In Lisbon, in the Breast Unit of the Champalimaud Foundation, surgeon Dr. Pedro Gouveia was in the operating room. The Spanish Dr. Rogelio Andrés-Luna, was supervising and guiding from the University of Zaragoza, in Spain.
Thanks to the metaverse, the operation proceeded as if the two surgeons were in the same room.
Dr. Gouveia used mixed reality glasses: the Hololens 2. You can not only see the patient in front of you. But they can also read the information projected on the inner lens of the glasses. Like the Terminator, but working to save a life, instead of extinguishing it.
Dr. Gouveia is a pioneer in metaverse surgery. She has been wearing Hololens glasses to perform breast cancer surgeries for some time. While at the Champalimaud Foundation, he developed a non-invasive digital methodology that allows surgeons to locate the tumor, as if the surrounding breast tissue were invisible.
Dr. Andrés-Luna was 900 km from the site of the operation. In fact, he was on stage at the Congress of the Spanish Association of Breast Surgeons. He demonstrated, with Dr. Gouveia, the newest way to perform remote surgical supervision.
All Dr. Andrés-Luna needed was a laptop. It was linked to Dr. Gouveia’s Hololens through a private 5G network, using German software. Despite the distance between the two doctors, they reported that everything went smoothly, as if the supervising surgeon was standing next to the surgeon performing the operation.
latency
What would happen if there was a delay in the information? How did the surgeons synchronize their actions with several seconds between what one was doing and the other seeing?
By not using 4G or Wifi technology. They used 5G. Dr. Gouveia said that “5G pulverizes latency, reducing it to a few milliseconds. That’s why it was so crucial in the context of our experiment.”
Said Dr. Gouveia: “We performed the first live experiment in the world, during breast cancer surgery, using what we call ‘remote monitoring’.”
Dr. Gouveia believes that remote monitoring it has the potential to become a main feature of future operating rooms. 5G makes remote monitoring an absolute reality.
Dr. Andrés-Luna said: “I gave directions to my ‘apprentice’. I was able to point him to the sites where he needed to be more careful and show him pictures or videos. We were in constant audiovisual contact.”
The doctors relied on the big phone companies to make the operation work.
The success of the operation was a proof of concept and Dr. Gouveia says that it will change the way surgery is done in the future. The potential it has for supervising new surgeons was incredibly valuable.
Surgery in the Metaverse: Training
Dr. Gouveia said that at this time, once young surgeons finish their training, they make their surgical debuts without any supervision. This is especially true in remote places or countries. Sometimes they may be the only person qualified to perform the surgery. “Their operations can be recorded and later evaluated, but during the surgical act they are alone and in need of help.”
Dr. Gouveia says the technology can be used for surgical students to remotely attend surgical operations. As if they were in the room.
“The advances that immersive technologies will bring, through remote tutoring/supervision, open a new era: that of the use of the so-called ‘metaverse’ in postgraduate medical education. The metaverse is defined as Internet access through augmented, virtual, mixed and/or extended reality through a headset, and is already considered the next generation mobile computing platform.”
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