Five Milestones That Pushed Telesurgery Beyond the Operating Room
Telesurgery has been technically possible since the Lindbergh Operation crossed the Atlantic in 2001. Five more milestones have since pushed the distance, the network, and the specialty further than a single transatlantic case could show.
Corindus performed the first in-human telerobotic coronary intervention
Dr. Tejas Patel at Apex Heart Institute in India used Corindus Vascular Robotics' CorPath GRX system to complete five percutaneous coronary interventions from a distance of about 20 miles at the company's Nebraska headquarters in December 2018.
The company described the case as the world's first in-human telerobotic coronary intervention, building on a porcine-model demonstration broadcast from Mayo Clinic to a cardiology conference three months earlier.
Source: Corindus Vascular Robotics
PLA General Hospital performed the first 5G remote brain surgery
Dr. Ling Zhipei of Beijing's PLA General Hospital implanted a deep brain stimulation device into a Parkinson's patient in Beijing while operating the equipment from Hainan, 3,000 kilometers away, in March 2019.
The three-hour procedure ran over a 5G network built by Huawei and China Mobile, which the surgical team credited with removing the lag that had made earlier remote-control attempts impractical.
Source: Global Times
A Chinese research team completed the first 5G telesurgery with a domestic robot
Researchers in China used the Micro Hand S surgical robot to complete four laparoscopic procedures on animal subjects between Qingdao and Xixiu, a network distance of nearly 3,000 kilometers, in September 2019.
The team reported an average network delay of 264 milliseconds, and completed a radical cystectomy on a human patient the following year using the same domestically produced robot and 5G link.
SpaceMIRA performed the first robotic surgery aboard the ISS
A modified version of Virtual Incision's MIRA platform, called spaceMIRA, arrived at the International Space Station in February 2024 as part of a NASA-funded experiment with the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
Six surgeons at the company's Nebraska headquarters took turns operating the robot from the ground, guiding it through a series of cuts on rubber bands standing in for surgical tissue.
At the same time, a separate run tested the system's ability to complete simple cuts on its own. Command lag ran to roughly 800 milliseconds, a gap the team said would need to close significantly before any real procedure could be attempted this way.
No patient was involved, but Virtual Incision framed the test as an early proof of concept for telesurgery on long-duration space missions, where returning an astronaut to Earth for care isn't an option.
Source: Virtual Incision
SS Innovations performed the first robotic bariatric telesurgery
Dr. Mohit Bhandari used SS Innovations' SSi Mantra 3 platform to perform a gastric bypass on a patient in Indore while operating from a console in Gurugram, roughly 850 kilometers away, in July 2025.
The company described it as the world's first robotic telesurgery performed for weight-loss surgery, and the first long-distance telesurgery case between two major Indian cities.
