Technical Challenges of Remote Access Surgery

1880 Words4 Pages

Technical Challenges of Remote Access Surgery

Abstract: Telesurgery, or remote access surgery, is "the provision of surgical care over a distance with direct, real-time visualization of the operative field with the help of telepresence technology and force feedback" [Nair, 1]. This paper outlines the potential impact of telesurgery on medicine and analyzes the technical obstacles that hinder the pervasive use of this technology.

The term 'telesurgery' is used to describe surgical procedures that are performed by a surgeon at a distance from the patient through a virtual interface. Still in its experimental stages and limited to minimally-invasive surgical procedures, telesurgery promises to one day bridge physical barriers between surgeons and patients. When time is critical and patients are immobile or remotely situated, telesurgery has the potential to save lives. However, the technical difficulties, financial costs, and legal issues involved with this new technology make telesurgery far from commonplace today. Unlike other forms of telemedicine such as remote medical consulting, telesurgery involves direct, real-time, physical contact with a patient's body and thus demands an unprecedented degree of precision, fidelity, and expediency. This paper identifies and explores the limiting constraints of developing this new and revolutionary technology. It asserts that the main challenges to telesurgery result from its high implementation costs and the technical difficulties associated with recreating a real-time, virtual, and tactile operating environment.

Telesurgery owes its origins to the atomic energy industry's need in the 1950s to handle dangerous and hazardous materials in a safe manner....

... middle of paper ...

...asha. Various Aspects of Telemedicine. 1997.

Dempsey, Lorraine. Virtual Reality in Surgery. 20 Feb 2001.

Ditlea, Steve. Robocops. An MIT Enterprise Technology. Nov/Dec. 2000. .

Hickey, Christopher. Distance Medicine: Haptic-Visual Input. 20 Feb. 2001.

Kershaw, Charly. Remote Control Surgery. 21 March 1997. .

Nair, Nundu. Telesurgery. 1999. .

Pescovitz, David. In the Waiting Room. 2000. .

Proukas, Constantine-Basil et al. Technology and Clinical Applications: Telemedicine. 1996. .

Proukas, Constantine-Basil. Medical Robotics. 1996. .

Stevens, Rick L et al. Petaflops in Medicine: Telesurgery PetaFlops Workshop. 26 June 1998. < http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/petaflops/ 95_workshop/participants.html>.

Vanderheyden, L. Telesurgery: Fiction or Reality? Dossier Telemedicine, 1997

More about Technical Challenges of Remote Access Surgery

Open Document