Florida Surgeon Removes Prostate From Patient 35 Miles Away in Remote Operation

Dr Vipul Patel performed what The Guardian describes as the first telerobotic operation between two hospitals in the United States, removing a man's prostate on Sunday while sitting 35 miles away from him.

Patel is founder and medical director of the Global Robotics Institute at AdventHealth Celebration, a hospital in suburban Orlando, Florida. He operated from that facility. The patient, identified as Mark, was at an AdventHealth facility in Minneola, Florida. He is 66 and has prostate cancer, and he volunteered for a clinical study evaluating a robotic telesurgery system. Telesurgery is surgery in which the surgeon works through a robot from a distance.

The procedure was a robotic prostatectomy, an operation to remove the prostate gland. It was carried out as part of a clinical research study under an investigational device exemption from the US Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency that regulates medical devices. That exemption allows the system to be studied in patients. It is not FDA approval or clearance for general use.

Marcio Moschovas, a surgeon who is co-principal investigator of the study, provided onsite support to the patient during the operation.

Sunday's surgery followed 10 investigational telesurgeries between Orlando and Luanda, Angola, and marks the study's expansion into US hospitals. Those earlier procedures were carried out between the two cities, according to the same report.

AdventHealth, the health system that runs the facilities involved, said no previous reports have documented a telesurgery procedure between two locations in the US. It also cautioned that Sunday's surgery does not establish the technology's general clinical performance.

Patel has personally performed more than 20,000 robotic prostatectomies, according to the Global Robotics Institute's website.