Michelle Dickinson: nanotechnologist on the pig that underwent telesurgery from 9,000 kilometres away

A pig in Hong Kong just underwent surgery - which might not seem strange until you learn that the surgeon operating on the pig did so from 9,300 kilometres away.

While telehealth became more common during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s still the norm that a surgeon needs to be physically present for operations. In a massive leap forward for telesurgery and published in the journal Advanced Intelligent Systems,  the endoscopy was performed by a researcher sitting in Zurich, Switzerland showcasing how cutting-edge technology and a superfast internet connection can bridge huge distances in medical procedures.

The anesthetised pig had a specially designed endoscope inserted into its stomach by local surgeons in Hong Kong. The endoscope’s magnetic head allowed it to be bent in any direction, making it smaller and easier to manoeuvre than traditional devices. It was also equipped with a tiny gripper, allowing scientists to take tissue samples from the stomach wall remotely. The endoscope was controlled using a PlayStation controller which maneuverer it with only a 300-millisecond delay.

This smaller, more manoeuvrable endoscope holds great promise for future medical procedures, especially as it could be used in human patients via the nose instead of the mouth which would be more comfortable for patients, require lighter sedation, and be a better solution for children.

Telesurgery has been tested before, when scientists on Earth successfully operated a surgical robot on the International Space Station (ISS), however that experiment involved a much shorter distance of only 400 kilometres.

As for the pig, it came through the procedure unscathed, blissfully unaware of the ground-breaking role it played in advancing medical science.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talk SEDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
And with our science study of the week. Doctor Michelderkinson
joins us, Now.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Good morning, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
This is fascinating the story because I think it's you know,
while what happened to the pig is interesting, I think
the implications of it are fascinating.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
It's poor little pig. So this little piggy in Hong
Kong went under some anesthetic and was surrounded by magnets
and underwent a surgery. And you might go, Okay, pig's
undergo surgery. I mean, it might not be that common,
but that happens until you hear that the surgeon was
actually nine three hundred kilometers away in Zurich in Switzerland.

(00:48):
And so this is the longest what they call telly
surgery that has ever happened. And so, I mean during COVID,
we sort of got into telehealth in healthcare where you
can phone up or video conference your doctor now and
you sort of get used to it. Okay, I can
do medical stuff over the internet over video calls, but
usually when you're doing surgery, you want your surgeon, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
That's you feel a little bit bitner if there in
the room with you.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
But Telly Surgery is thinking that I'm really fascinated about
because you have to have a qualified surgeon close to you.
That means and there's a postcode lottery here that says, basically,
are you lucky enough if you need a complex surgery
to live close to where there's a physical human who
can do what you need to be done. And so
Telly Surgery is going to be an amazing revolution. And
so they were testing this and there's a few things

(01:33):
about this that I love, so number one the big
thing about this study, and this study is published in
Advanced Intelligent Systems. If you want to read it, it's
open source. Got lovely pictures of all of the diagrams
of the pig and where it was, which is quite fun.
But basically it's a paper about this new type of
technology called robotic magnetic navigation. And so this pig went endoscopy.

(01:54):
So usually would put a tube down somebody's mouth, down
their throat to have a look inside, and it had
little grippers on it so you could take a little
biap so if it needed to. But this new endoscope
that they have invented just for this type of Telly
surgery is much thinner, and it's controlled by magnets instead
of controlled by motors. So usually you have a big endoscope,
which if you put it down your throat you're gagging on.

(02:15):
They have to sedate people because they don't try and
choke on it. This one is a much thinner system
because actually it's controlled by magnets on the outside of
the body, and so it means it's much thinner, and
that's sort of the big thing about this paper. So
they put the endoscope in, they were able to maneuver
their head around and this person who's sitting in Zurich
is controlling it. This is my favorite part with the
PlayStation controller. So they've got a standard PlayStation controller. They've

(02:40):
pumped it up and they're just going left, right, up, down,
and don't they press fire and jump and all of
the other buttons on there. But they controlled it with
the PlayStation control. It did all the things they needed
to do, and the pig was perfectly fine. But actually
we're able to show that there was with good internet,
there was only a three hundred millisecond delay between what
the person in Zurich was doing and what was physically

(03:00):
happening in hard so fairly noticeable right now.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
But you raise on a shoe there, yeah, you've got
slightly Yeah, you wouldn't be going yep, that sounds like mate.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
So it's got to have at least five G capability,
and you know we're moving towards six G in the
next sort of twenty years, So that sort of high
speed internet has to happen because otherwise you don't want
to have a bit of a glitch. But the same
with self driving cars, like we're all waiting for the
next super high so internet, Michelle.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
You know they've always said you can't go to Antactica
and winter if you've got you know, you've got it.
They prefer people not to have an appendix because if
something happened, they can't operate on you. And now you
could wow, yeah, I mean yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
There's lots of places you could have this happen if
it's a system, and so it's quite interesting from a
future of measicin point of view. Yes, you can go
to Antarctic, but also if you're thinking about places, you
know where we don't have that level of surgeon There
are some countries that just don't have that sort of expertise,
And so is there a way that we can bring
in this magnet system to their surgeries and then be

(04:05):
able to operate remotely and with starlink now and being
able to have internet everywhere, we might be able to
have that sort of speed. So this was a test
of the speed and also a test of this new
type of magnetic robot navigation system, which proved to be
amazing and the little pig was fine. Work up. Didn't
know that it literally basically broken through in sights. And
for everybody who's going no, no, no, we've done this before.

(04:27):
Telesurgeries happened before. It has We did have a surgical
robot on the International Space Station, which sounds far away,
but actually it was only four hundred kilometers.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
I thought I was doing quite well coming up with
that idea.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
So yeah, this is nine three hundred kilometers away, so
way further than the International Space Station and really a
big step in science by inventing both a new type
of endoscope but also relying on multiple technologies coming together
to be able to really give us hope. I think
about being able to operate in different places, on different
people and really hopefully democratize some of the medical health

(05:03):
care that we might in the Western world have access to.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Thank you so much, Michelle, appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks A B from nine am Sunday,
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