India’s first remote heart surgery completed successfully

NEW DELHI: Dr Tejas Patel of the Apex Institute in Ahmedabad, Gujarat has become the first Indian surgeon to perform a remote heart surgery in India. The patient was lying about 20 miles away from the surgeon. The surgery was performed using a CorPath GRX robot, developed by a company called Corindus.

The patient was suffering from a condition called atherosclerosis, where blood flow restricts due to plaque build-up in the blood vessels, the medical procedure was performed to open the restricted vessels.

The procedure has been performed in the past using the robot where a workstation is set up a few feet away from the patient. However, this time, the work station was set up several miles away from the patient. The station has multiple joysticks and cameras which the surgeon uses to perform the surgery. For this procedure, the team set up cameras in the operating room too in order to provide additional footage of the procedure to the surgeon. Surgeons were also assigned outside the operating room in order to observe the procedure.