2026-03-06 12:07:51

A surgeon has successfully guided a robot through a prostate removal surgery – 1,500 miles away.

Prof. Prokar Dasgupta – a professor of urology who heads The London Clinic’s robotic centre of excellence – performed the procedure from the UK capital on 62-year-old Paul Boxton via a hi-tech four-armed robot, which was fitted with a 3D camera, at St. Berbard’s hospital in Gibraltar.

The professor used a console in London to guide Microport’s Toumai Robotic System through a series of steps to successfully remove the organ, with a lag of just 0.06 seconds between the surgeon and the robot.

Paul – who has prostate cancer – insisted it was a “no-brainer” to be the “guinea pig” for the surgery.

He said: “A lot of people actually said to me: ‘You’re not going to do it, are you?’

“I thought, I’m giving something back here.

“I love football – we’ve gone from being in the Championship to the Champions League as far as surgeons are concerned.”

The man had expected to need to travel back to England from Gibraltar, where he has lived for 40 years, after he was diagnosed with cancer, but jumped at the chance to take up the robotic option instead.

The surgeon said the “milestone” operation went “extremely well”.

He said: “We operated on an NHS patient in Gibraltar from the London Clinic 2,400km away using a robot with a 3D HD camera with four arms.

“The robot is completely controlled from a console, which is like a computer console, using high-speed lines with a time delay of, would you believe it, only 0.06 seconds – that 60 milliseconds.”

A team on the ground at St. Bernard’s were ready to take over if the connection to London dropped for any reason.

The professor will repeat the remote procedure with another patient on 14 March, watched by a livestream audience of 20,000 surgeonsat the European Association of Urology congress.

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