r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Vegetable-Mousse4405 • 2d ago
A surgeon successfully removed a lung tumour from a patient located 5,000 km away by operating a robot remotely.
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u/Sierra_Bravo915 2d ago
What exactly is the advantage to having a surgeon do this remotely as opposed to a surgeon doing this in person?
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u/AgiHidupAgiNgleban 2d ago
Resource limitations of specialist.
For specific type of surgery, you need a sub-specialist to operate. Those sub-specialists are limited, and are unable to travel to remote and far locations. Most of the time, they are placed in the main hospitals of the state/country. If they travel to these other locations, they will have to halt services for days in their residence hospital.
Additionally, poor patients are unable to even partake the cost of travel and accomodation to these hospitals far away.
For robotic facilities to be set up in a hospital, it saves time, travel time and money for both the patient and the subspecialist. This is the added advantage.
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u/aberroco 2d ago
In addition - efficiency. Local surgeon might have lack of knowledge/practice for something like neuro- or cardiac surgeries, but he might prepare the patient. Then a five minute swap to a robot, and the neurosurgeon then might immediately take over the operation and complete the most difficult part. After that - back to local surgeon to do final part and stitching. In the meantime, the neurosurgeon might work on another patient.
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u/LucasCBs 2d ago
Maybe in 10-30 years. A robot like that probably costs half as much as the entire rest of the hospitals. Especially for remote areas, there is no way a hospital can afford this thing. Not to mention the perfect fiber optic connection needed
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u/AgiHidupAgiNgleban 2d ago
Yet you see it happening.
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u/LucasCBs 2d ago
Am I? Where?
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u/AgiHidupAgiNgleban 2d ago
….the video above?
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u/LucasCBs 2d ago
In what world is a city with a million inhabitants "remote"
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u/AgiHidupAgiNgleban 2d ago
In a country like China where the population is 2 billion, and a city with a million is still less than 0.05% of the entire population.
I really don’t understand why you need to downplay this. It is what it is. It is next level impressive.
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u/LucasCBs 2d ago
In a country like China where the population is 2 billion, and a city with a million is still less than 0.05% of the entire population.
If China can't produce a top-surgeon per one million inhabitants, it should maybe focus on that instead
I really don’t understand why you need to downplay this. It is what it is. It is next level impressive.
The tech is impressive, it's just never gonna be used the way it's advertised here (which is clearly an ad). Not for at least another decade or three
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u/igotshadowbaned 2d ago
If you're in a remote enough area, a surgeon specialized in your problem might not just be on hand at all times and with this it would enable them being able to "travel" there instantly.
That's my best guess anyway
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u/kevinoku 2d ago
Price. Instead of a 300K/year surgeon in the states you can now have somebody do it for 50K/year out of a office in India.
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u/CheesyDanny 2d ago
No advantage other than showing off. Makes people think China has the best healthcare in the world.
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u/elitereaper1 2d ago
I swear. You guys see "china" in the title, and your brains turn to mush. Geez.
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u/Questioning-Zyxxel 2d ago
Hm. What makes me think k you have failed to keep up with all remote medicine work in the Western world the last 20-30 years... Almost like you have more opinions than actual knowledge.
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u/arbiter12 2d ago
When I see "China" + [Some obvious branding], I'm 90% sure I'm watching some investors video presentation. And if you know anything about the VC scene in China, you can be sure that things either did not happen, or did not happen like that.
For one thing, the hard part of having access to "high quality healthcare" in remote regions is almost never "lack of personnel" (unless emergency). You can fly a surgeon to anywhere in the world. What you cannot do, is build him an operating theater in the middle of the mountain. And this machine doesn't solve that.
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u/edtumb 2d ago
This is actually real, and this is not the first time China performed remote surgery. The remote surgery tests were performed since 5 years ago, started with using LAN Cable then with 5G infrastructure.
Last year, another Chinese company attempted similar feat successfully.
Robotic Surgical System is actually common things now in the US and Japan. China is catching up really fast.
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u/MiniMeowl 2d ago
This reminds me of a meme I have seen often on Reddit whenever China-related things appear:
Thing in USA: ☺️☺️
Thing in Japan: 🤩😍
Thing in China: 😒😠29
u/icedragon9791 2d ago
What if that remote region is difficult to access? If they've got a suitable operating theater, this allows them to "have" the surgeon 'there" instead of flying them out, doing room and board, and having a surgeon who has been sleeping in a foreign bed and is probably tired doing the operation. Obviously the machine is installed into already existing facilities.
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u/InfantryCop 2d ago
Still fails the smell test. These Machines require constant upkeep and expertise to continue using them.
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u/arbiter12 2d ago
This. A "highly experimental medical prototype" is not what I think about when you tell me "remote medical region".
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u/LeTrashmob 2d ago edited 2d ago
Its a copy or rebrand of a Da-Vinci-Surgical Robot... That system is nearly 25 years old today.
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u/icedragon9791 2d ago
No shit. Maintenance is cheaper than a surgeon
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u/InfantryCop 2d ago
You're ignoring the specialty required to maintain and fix these level of machines in a theoretical, hard to get to, hospital. This isn't the maintenance man removing and emptying the trap under a sink.
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u/joevarny 2d ago
This tech is going to be really useful as a replacement for astronauts, oil rig workers and miners.
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u/nebulaedlai 2d ago
flying a surgeon out or flying a patient to the hospital seem much cheaper than bringing a complex machine to a remote region that is difficult to access. Not to mention all the foundations that are needed for the machine to operate with minimal lag.
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u/Wan-Pang-Dang 2d ago
Actually this opens windows for opportunities. Imagine you have fuck you money and build.. oh.. i dont know.. one of these near rich ppl and can claim you have specialists for almost any surgical procedures on fucking hand.
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u/Dependent-Plan-5998 2d ago
Yeah but hear me out: cheap outsourced surgeons from a poorer country doing it for 1/5th of the price.
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u/10110101101_ 2d ago
But flying a surgeon out takes time. Time they could use by doing other life saving operations.
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u/Appropriate-Sound169 2d ago
I used to be an electrical devices safety engineer, and I once watched a Chinese Li-ion battery manufacturer's sales video where they used a knife to cut a Li-ion cell in half 😬 They don't see rules and lying the same as the west. When I went out to do a safety audit of a Chinese factory they were amazed that they couldn't just pay me for a certificate of acceptance. Nope, you do have to actually meet the safety standards!
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u/l2aiko 2d ago
Just wondering what difference does it make saying its a 5G machine? its not like its connected directly to the source through 5G, if anything 4g should have longer range (not that it could reach 5000kms)
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u/Ok-Amoeba3007 2d ago
I was wondering the same lol. like, wasn't 5G a wireless standard?, and a mobile one at that I think. I imagine these kind of thing wouldn't be wireless lol.
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u/Joeoens 2d ago edited 2d ago
All sources state that it uses 5G, but it just doesn't make sense to me. 5G is used as low latency wireless protocol, but afaik the 5G tower then transmits the data through a wired connection to the receiver. So why do they not use a wired connection in the first place? Either my understanding is wrong and the data stays in the air which may be faster, or they only have a shitty wired connection at the hospital.
Edit: Did some research and 5G is definitely much slower than fiber.
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u/Electrical-Heat8960 2d ago
It’s never going to be faster than light and fibre optic is already that fast.
Why not just connect it to the already existing fibre network. (Unless it really is a tiny village up the side of a mountain)
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u/gummyjellyfishy 2d ago
The trust you'd have to put into that internet connection, in a surgery where every millisecond can count. I dont know man
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u/Nemisis_007 2d ago
The robot looks so shaky too, but I guess if it's the only option, I wouldn't turn it down. At the end of the day, if something goes wrong, I'll at least die in my sleep and not have to worry about it.
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2d ago edited 2d ago
[deleted]
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u/gummyjellyfishy 2d ago
Lower latency does not mean no latency. Also, imagine a storm interference?
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u/gummyjellyfishy 2d ago
Every millisecond counts during a surgery. Compared to other modes of internet, 5G has the lowest latency (less lag), however, lagging less than the competition doesn't mean the lag wont affect the surgery. If a storm interferes, 5G connection could be lost/interrupted - during a surgery where every millisecond counts.
All i'm saying is the life of a person could rely on the internet connection, which is not perfect by any means. So while this does seem like a great thing, there are still dangers to it.
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u/No_Artichoke_8428 2d ago
Soon surgeons will be able to work from home in bed with an apple vision pro with family guy funnies on the side!
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u/WingsArisen 2d ago
We are so close to doctors working from home
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u/flatfootbluntwrap 2d ago
that’s craaazy tech must cost super $
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u/edtumb 2d ago
Robotic Surgical Systems are actually pretty common now in the US and Japan. This robot machine might cost only around 1 million USD. China is very fast on building their Robotic Surgical Systems, the pioneer was US company called Intuitive Surgical with their daVinci robot which cost around 2 million USD.
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u/MyChoiceNotYours 2d ago
You wouldn't want the Internet to go down or get hacked but cool none the less
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u/Negative-Neat-4269 2d ago
Only a matter of time before the human operative is removed from the equation by something that remembers literally everything it has ever been taught, every instructional video, lecture, textbook or medical paper it's ever read, understands human physiology as a whole more completely than a human ever could and never gets tired, drunk, hung over, angry, upset or just 'not feeling it today'. Probably sooner than you think as well.
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u/NarwhalEmergency9391 2d ago
You just need to hope you're not the one getting robot surgery when it glitches
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u/New-Replacement972 2d ago
Pretty soon it will just be a robot operating without a human to control it…
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u/smsrelay 1d ago
Why 5G? operation room should have fiber Internet, which is more stable and lower latency, right?
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u/lStJimmyl 1d ago
amazing! emotionally amazing!❤ people can still be pretty impressive in this putrid world!
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u/Andrew-The-Noob 2d ago
Good for doing surgery on astronauts in space. Too bad there's no such thing as astronauts or space. Only the flat earth and the icewall... right?
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u/SnooHesitations8849 2d ago
5G BS again and again and again. If you can afford that machine, I am sure to connect it to a fiber cable with higest priority. Fuck 5G
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u/icedragon9791 2d ago
China is ahead of the fucking game man
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u/PencilPym 2d ago
Actually there is a US company called Intuitive Surgical that developed this over 15 years ago with their DaVinci surgical robot.
Edge Medical yas just ripped off that machine, so nothing revolutionary here.
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u/L4n0x 2d ago
these surgical "robots" are in use all over the world
my local hospital here in germany uses one for micro-invasive surgery
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u/icedragon9791 2d ago
Yup! I had a surgery done by a da vinci in the US. But as far as I'm aware, we haven't deployed it for use in remote or poor regions of the country. This would be because the US sucks
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u/Vegetable-Mousse4405 2d ago
From flying taxis to 6th generation jet fighters, and now this. They're really ahead.
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u/icedragon9791 2d ago
Have you seen their EVs? Their budget models are nicer than our expensive ones
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u/Dr_Happygostab 2d ago
I'm sorry Mrs Jones your husband died due to a lagspike.