UpbeatA heart repaired from 7,500 miles away: the surgeon in Barcelona, the patient in Bengaluru
On a stage in Barcelona, surgeon Dr Sudhir Srivastava sat at a console and operated on a heart in Bengaluru, India — about 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometres) away. The patient, at the Sri Madhusudan Sai Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, needed an atrial septal defect repaired: a hole between the heart's upper chambers, closed here by a robot's arms guided in real time from another continent. The live demonstration, at the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery's annual meeting — the largest global gathering of heart-surgery leaders — used SS Innovations' SSi Mantra robotic system and its MantrAsana tele-surgeon console, with chief cardiac surgeon Dr Lalit Malik supporting at the patient's side. Further live telesurgeries followed at the Society of Robotic Surgery India conference in New Delhi. Distance surgery will never replace a local team — someone skilled must always be beside the patient — but it points to a future where the world's scarcest expertise can reach a patient who cannot travel to it.
SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation