Overview
- Published in The BMJ, the multicenter Chinese trial randomized 72 patients across five hospitals for radical prostatectomy or partial nephrectomy between December 2023 and June 2024.
- Telesurgery met the study’s non-inferiority benchmark for probability of surgical success, with outcomes reported as 100% for telesurgery versus 94.44% for local surgery and a posterior probability of 0.99.
- Network performance remained stable across 1,000–2,800 km (about 621–1,740 miles) with round-trip delays of 20.1–47.5 milliseconds and low frame loss.
- Secondary measures, including complications, early recovery, oncologic surrogate outcomes, and medical team workload, were similar in both groups; one preoperative malfunction in the local group delayed surgery.
- Nine patients withdrew (12.5%), surgeons each had more than 500 prior robotic cases, and follow-up was limited to 4 and 6 weeks, prompting calls for broader trials, governance, cost-effectiveness assessments, training standards, patient experience evaluation, and attention to public trust and potential uses in underserved, disaster, military, and space settings.