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Published on: January 6, 2023
The impact of latency on surgical precision and task completion during robotic-assisted remote telepresence surgery
Mehran Anvari1, Tim Broderick, Harvey Stein
1Centre for Minimal Access Surgery, St. Joseph's Healthcare, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. anvari@mcmaster.ca
Objective:
It has been suggested that robotic-assisted remote telepresence surgery with a signal transmission latency of greater than 300 ms may not be possible.
Methods:
We evaluated the impact of four different latencies of up to 500 ms on task completion and error rate in five surgeons after completion of three different surgical tasks.
Results:
The surgeons were able to complete all tasks with a latency of 500 ms. However, higher latency was associated with higher error rates and task completion time (TCT). There were significant variations between surgeons and different tasks.
Conclusion:
Surgeons are able to complete tasks with a signal transmission latency of up to 500 ms. The clinical impact of slower TCT and increased error rates encountered at higher latency needs to be established.
