Indore: In a milestone for digital healthcare, an India-led surgical team successfully completed the world’s longest-distance robot-assisted cardiac telesurgery. The procedure spanned approximately 18,000 kilometers of high-speed fiber network distance, connecting Georgetown in Guyana to Indore, India.
Procedure Details
The intercontinental procedure was performed by cardiac surgeon Dr Sudhir Srivastava, who operated from a tele-surgeon console at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation. His real-time manual inputs were transmitted to the Sri Aurobindo Institute of Medical Sciences (SAIMS) in Indore, where SSI Mantra surgical robot precisely replicated his movements on the patient. Local surgical assistance in Indore was provided by Dr Mohit Bhandari and Dr Ram Shukla.
“The patient, a 45-year-old woman, underwent a left internal mammary artery (LIMA) takedown as part of a coronary artery bypass. The operation was completed in four hours and 50 minutes, utilizing a fiber-optic network that maintained a strict latency of 290 to 300 milliseconds. This low delay ensured the precision and stability required for complex internal cardiac maneuvers,” Dr Bhandari told TOI.
Patient Outcome and Record
The patient was monitored locally post-operation and has since been discharged from the hospital. The event, which coincided with the official launch of Guyana’s National Robotic Surgery Programme, broke the previous long-distance telesurgery record of 10,000 kilometres, which connected Strasbourg, France, to Indore.
According to the medical team, the SSi Mantra platform has now been used to complete 173 telesurgeries globally, including 22 complex cardiac cases, making it the only robotic setup used globally for remote heart procedures.
Doctors noted that this cross-border collaboration proves that specialized surgical expertise can be deployed to remote regions worldwide, bypassing geographic barriers to bridge healthcare infrastructure gaps.
