A major medical breakthrough took place in Greece a few days ago, when, for the first time, a patient underwent surgery performed by a doctor located 8,000 kilometres away, in China.

The operation, a radical prostatectomy, was carried out on a patient diagnosed with prostate cancer using robotic equipment and telemedicine technology from Wuhan, China, by Evangelos Liatsikos, professor of medicine and director of the Urology Clinic at the University Hospital of Patras.

Speaking to ERT, Greece’s public broadcaster, Professor Liatsikos, who is due to use the same technology today to operate on a patient in Athens while he remains in Patras, described it as “technological progress” that allows a surgeon “to be so far away and sitting in a room in your tie, operating on a person”.

As he explained, a medical team was present in Athens and could have taken over the patient’s care if anything unexpected had happened, such as an earthquake like the one in Venezuela.

“The most striking thing was that there was no delay at all. It was as if I were standing right next to him. This connection is made through dedicated network lines. The Chinese side has secured the China-Frankfurt route, and we have secured the connection from Frankfurt to Athens,” the Greek doctor added.

He noted that “a satellite is no longer needed. We are now doing this through fibre-optic connections. Robotic technology already existed; what has now changed is that the machines can be supported by the networks.”

“We used to see this in films. The idea behind telemedicine with robotic machines is that you can train surgeons without travelling and perform operations remotely. And this is only the beginning,” he added.

Regarding the patient, Liatsikos said that “he was fully informed and very excited, because he was a pioneer.”

The professor of medicine estimated that surgical procedures like the one he carried out from China “will become more common. This process began tentatively over the past year, but you will see it happening very frequently in the future. Until now, telemedicine has been diagnostic; now it is becoming therapeutic. The original purpose behind the Americans’ development of robotic devices was to allow doctors to operate on the battlefield, but that was not possible because of connectivity problems. Now it is a truly spectacular situation.”

Finally, Liatsikos stressed that such procedures “require medical expertise, and Greece has doctors of the highest calibre. Technology knows no borders; whatever exists abroad also exists in our country.”