Jaipur: The city's Manipal Hospital claimed to have performed the world's first cardiac telesurgery under Dr Lalit Aditya Malik, who heads the cardiac surgery department. The state-of-the-art medical procedure was performed on January 9 and the second surgery was conducted the next day. Both were successful and the patients are recovering well.
"Robotic surgery is being done in our hospitals across the country. This pioneering achievement in robotic cardiac telesurgery is a milestone," Dilip Jose, MD and CEO of Manipal Hospitals, said.
"Successful robotic cardiac telesurgeries have been done on 59-year-old Jagdish Prasad and 56-year-old Pawan Kumar," Dr Malik said.
"The operations were successful only through a high-speed internet connection. Before performing the operation, rehearsals were done to ensure that there was no problem during the surgery. The entire operation was done through a robot which was operated from 286 kilometres apart," Dr Sudhir Srivastava, who guided the entire surgery from Gurugram, said.
Dr Malik said telesurgeries related to gallbladder and pancreas have been performed before. But robotic cardiac telesurgery has been done for the first time in the world. In this, the first operation was internal mammary artery harvesting and the second operation was the groundbreaking endoscopic coronary artery bypass. Both these complex surgeries are related to the heart.
He said as the operations completely relied on high-speed internet, the hospital administration was fully prepared for zero glitches in connectivity. Though no such issues cropped up.
Also Read:
