Chinese Doctor Performs Remote Lung Tumor Surgery Using Robot from 3,000 Miles Away
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Is this the future of medicine? In the accompanying image, Dr. Luo Qingquan operates from a sophisticated control center to guide robotic surgical tools in removing a lung tumor from a patient located 3,000 miles away.
Dr. Luo was seated in the Shanghai Chest Hospital on China’s Pacific Coast, while the patient was anesthetized in a hospital in Kashgar, Xinjiang Autonomous Region.
Using the Chinese-made 5G Medbot, Dr. Luo transmitted his precision and decades of experience instantaneously across three time zones. This groundbreaking telesurgery could save thousands in rural areas where a lack of expert medical staff previously meant a death sentence.
According to Shanghai Daily, the Shanghai Chest Hospital is China’s first medical facility to perform robot-assisted surgeries and leads the country in the number of such procedures performed.
The global shortage of specialist surgeons significantly hinders medical advancements in low and middle-income countries. There are just over 1.1 million surgeons worldwide, with half as many anesthesiologists. Even high-income countries face shortages, but a Lancet review noted only 0.7 specialist surgeons per 100,000 people in low and middle-income countries, compared to 5.5 in high-income countries.
The paper further reveals that 48% of the world’s population has access to only 20% of the global surgical workforce.
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