Safety and reliability of telesurgery in China: a multicenter, single-arm, phase I clinical trial

The development and implementation of telesurgery are of significant strategic importance for the future expansion and evolution of the surgical robotics industry. Telesurgery has been demonstrated to improve access to advanced medical care but also enhances the overall healthcare delivery in these underserved regions. Here, we presented a telesurgery system that optimized surgical signals via a telesurgery host using real-time signal processing and multi-source signal interaction systems. Additionally, a telesurgery network solution was developed to ensure seamless network switching.

We present the results of the first multi-center human study of robot-assisted laparoscopic telesurgery. Specifically, telesurgeries were performed on 18 patients across four hospitals in China utilizing EDGE MP 1000 tele-surgical systems. The distances between each pair of cities ranged from 450 km to 2200 km.

The telesurgery success rate was 100%. The mean real-time round-trip network latency, network jitter, video encoding/decoding latency, code rate, and video display latency were 38.38 ± 13.25 ms, 0.39 ± 0.29 ms, 20.02 ± 0.06 ms, and 12.77 ± 0.57 Mbps, 21.35 ± 3.42 ms, respectively. There was no frame loss during all telesurgeries.

Our results indicated that telesurgery using 5G and dedicated line technology was a safe and feasible treatment option for patients with urologic oncology.