Whether it’s from Scrubs or House, books, or even your own experience, chances are we all have some idea what an operating theatre looks like.

Scrubbed up surgeons and anaesthetists with face masks and their hair covered, wearing gloves and carrying a scalpel.

But how about if your surgeon had a PlayStation controller in their hand?

Well that’s exactly what happened recently, in a surgical experiment between ETH Zurich and The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

With a pig as their patient, researchers in Zurich performed a magnetic endoscopy on the pig, with the probe in Hong Kong controlled from 9,300 kilometers away in Zurich, Switzerland.

Sounds like something from science fiction, right?

Well it was all made possible thanks to the invention of robotic magnetic surgery tools which, as the researchers state in the academic journal Advanced Intelligent Systems, is actually a safer and better alternative:

“In contrast to conventional surgical robots, a robotic magnetic navigation system generates external magnetic fields to safely and dexterously steer soft magnetic devices within the human body, enabling a versatile, economical, and accessible telesurgery platform for a variety of procedures.”

Remote surgery – where the surgeon is far away from the patient – is actually not a new invention. In fact, the technological capabilities of this were first demonstrated in 2001, when a surgeon based in New York performed surgery with the help of long-distance telesurgery in Strasbourg.

However, due to many factors including financial, technological, and ethical challenges, long-distance surgery hasn’t really taken off.

However, with technology improving all the time, the researchers demonstrated the capabilities of modern internet and magnetic robotic tools to overcome these challenges.

Using normal computers and robotic technology in Hong Kong, alongside specialist software and a reliable, high-speed internet connection, the researchers were able to perform the surgery safely and successfully.

The study even showed that, given the success of the surgery, the technology could have promise in delivering a safer, more convenient procedure:

“Magnetically guided devices are similarly less complex than their traditional counterparts. They are also more flexible, mitigating the risk of accidental damage to the surrounding tissues.”

While this is great news in itself, it also helps to break barriers for people living in remote communities.

With specific focus on gastro-intestinal (GI) procedures, there showed plenty of promise for extending this study further.

In places where medical facilities, or the specialist staff required to operate them, are scarce, technology like this could be potentially life saving:

“A number of minimally invasive GI procedures, such as routine cancer screenings, are currently unavailable for large populations and could provide real benefit. A teleoperated RMN platform in such an area would enable a remote expert to perform these procedures and provide a useful platform for training local operators.”

While this technology is still in its early days, the impossible is seemingly being made possible.

Who knows, maybe one day all surgeons will be operating with the help of a PlayStation controller!

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