Remote robotic eye surgery achieves breakthrough

Ophthalmologists from the Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center of Sun Yat-sen University reached a milestone on Sunday by successfully conducting the world's first remote robotic subretinal injection surgery.

The surgery's core platform was an independently developed domestic 5G ophthalmic surgical robot. Through real-time connection between the main control terminal in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, and the surgical terminal in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the operation was carried out with precise execution of a micron-level fundus procedure over a distance of more than 4,200 kilometers.

The surgery was performed by a medical team led by Professor Lin Haotian, director of the Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center, in collaboration with Professor Yang Bo from Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Hospital.

Before the operation, Lin, Yang and their respective teams jointly assessed the patient and planned the injection path, dosage and depth.

The surgery began at 8 am on Sunday. As the robotic microneedle was inserted into the patient's eye in the Xinjiang operating room, specialists in Guangzhou remotely guided it to the retinal surface of the lesion area, reaching the precise depth and injecting the drug. The entire process was completed smoothly in less than seven minutes.

During the procedure, the network remained stable with clear images, and the robot responded sensitively, keeping the needle tip steady during the injection. The operation achieved the expected results.

The success of the surgery marks a key leap from "feasibility" to "practicality" in China's field of remote high-precision ophthalmic surgery and represents a major breakthrough in the country's development of remote intelligent medical care, Lin said.

He said the achievement shows that China is not only capable of delivering high-quality medical resources to border regions through remote technologies, but can also safely apply domestically developed high-precision robots in ophthalmic surgeries.

"We will continue to explore the new 'remote plus intelligent' model, promote the realization of 'mobilizable, shareable and replicable' high-level ophthalmic medical resources, and enable more grassroots patients to benefit from technological innovation in the following months," Lin said.

China has one of the world's largest populations of visually impaired and blind people, with high-quality ophthalmic medical resources relatively insufficient and unevenly distributed.

Subretinal injection is a type of fundus surgery that demands extreme stability and precision from the operator and is widely used in treating blinding eye diseases such as submacular hemorrhage.

To this end, Lin's team has collaborated with Huang Kai, a professor at the School of Computer Science and Engineering at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou Oculotronics Medical Instrument Co, and related professional teams and medical units to develop the remote ophthalmic surgical robot platform, featuring "remote doctor control, micron-level motion precision and real-time 3D high-definition".

In June 2023, Lin's team completed the world's first remote, micron-level eye surgery on rabbits using an independently developed 5G robot. The achievement was later accepted and published by the high-impact international journal Advanced Science.

zhengcaixiong@chinadaily.com.cn