The metaverse applied to medicine in Portugal: A Spanish and a Portuguese doctor performed an “unprecedented” breast cancer surgery separated by 900 kilometers and using technology of augmented reality and of 5G.
The protagonists of this unprecedented surgery are two doctors from the Champalimaud Foundation, the Portuguese surgeon Pedro Gouveia carried out an intervention in Lisbon this Thursday while wearing augmented reality glasses that allowed the Spaniard Rogelio Andrés-Luna to supervise the operation from Zaragoza (center -east of Spain).
“What we did yesterday was a first experience in which a surgeon who is far away, through 5G connectivity, internet and augmented reality, manages to see what another remote surgeon is doing and seeing,” Gouveia explained today in statements to Efe. , who specified that the supervisor could provide audiovisual material that was projected on the glasses.
The Portuguese surgeon, in the operating room of the Breast Unit of the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, performed the intervention equipped with mixed reality glasses (Hololens 2, developed by Microsoft)which allowed her to transparently see the real world (to the patient) and, at the same time, have access to the information projected on the special lenses.
Andrés-Luna, for his part, was on stage at the Congress of the Spanish Association of Breast Surgeons (AECIMA), organized at the University of Zaragoza’s Faculty of Medicine, with a laptop connected to Gouveia’s Hololens, through a private 5G network of Altice Portugal, associated with Movistar in Spain.
“Making a live transmission of a surgery from point A to point B by cable is easy, but the distance is difficult, especially with existing technologies (4G), where latency (delay in receiving image and/or sound ) is high”, highlighted Gouveia, who assured that the 5G connection is effective for these situations.
“With 5G it is already possible”, insisted the specialist from the Champalimaud Foundation, an international reference center recognized for its research in oncology and neuroscience.
Gouveia also highlighted the opportunity offered by this technology, since it will speed up decision-making in interventions that in other circumstances would be delayed by having to sterilize the material used in the operating room and will facilitate better monitoring of doctors who need tutoring or collaboration among experts from different centers or cities.