India’s indigenous surgical robotic system, SSI Mantra, successfully conducted two robotic cardiac surgeries via telesurgery over a distance of 286km. Both were cardiac surgeries - Internal Mammary Artery Harvesting procedure and Robotic Beating Heart Totally Endoscopic Coronary Artery Bypass (TECAB).
It is a first in the world.
Led by Dr Sudhir Srivastava, founder, chairman, and CEO of SS Innovations International, Inc., from the SSI headquarters in Gurugram, and supported by Dr Lalit Malik, chief of cardiac surgery at Manipal Hospital, Jaipur, and his team, the surgeries were carried out with exceptional precision. The latency was low - just 35-40 milliseconds (latency in telesurgery is the time delay between a command and response).
The SSI Mantra 3 Surgical Robotic System is the only robotic system in the world to have received regulatory approval for telesurgery and tele-proctoring. Approved by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO). This validation will enable remote surgeries and medical education, enabling healthcare professionals to collaborate across distances.
Dr Sudhir Srivastava, founder, chairman, and CEO of SS Innovations International, Inc.
Srivastava said that telesurgery would bridge gaps in access to medical expertise and deliver the highest standard of care, regardless of geographical barriers. It would bring world-class surgical expertise directly to underserved communities, eliminating the need for patients to travel long distances to urban centres for specialised care. He also said that this was a step to democratising access to robotic surgery.
Surgical robotics has seen immense leaps in the last 20 years. While the original robotic system was designed to achieve remote surgery and the ability to perform coronary bypass surgery in a complete closed chest approach (a minimally invasive procedure).
Dr Fredric Moll, father of surgical robotics, said that if the highly complex beating heart bypass surgery could be performed with the robot, then all other procedures would be possible.
