Over a hundred medical specialists from all over the world attended, last June 20, the Telerobotic Surgery Virtual Symposium , in the course of which Pedro Adragão , cardiologist and coordinator of the Cardiac Rhythm Centre from Hospital da Luz Lisboa, and Carlo Pappone , from Hospital San Donato, in Milan, participated, for the first time, in an atrial fibrillation ablation with the possibility of conducting the procedure from many miles away. Pedro Adragão is, together with Carlos Pappone, one of the world top specialists in the area and, during the symposium, they were able to show the potential of long-distance robotic cardiac surgery , proving it to be possible for the Portuguese physician to intervene on a patient in Milan, and for the Italian physician to do the same on a patient in Lisbon. Both doctors were separated by 1700 km, yet they steered the catheters used in this cardiac ablation procedure in the other one’s hospital and in real time. The procedure in question is destined to treat severe arrhythmia, this being the first time in the world it was done from a distance of 1700 kilometres. In an exclusive coverage by TVI channel, that followed this world event, Pedro Adragão explained the advantages and potential of this technological innovation , while Pappone stated that: “This is not the future. This is the present!”. The Cardiac Rhythm Centre in Hospital da Luz Lisboa is the single one in Portugal and one of the three centres with largest experience in Europe in the application of robotic surgery through stereotaxy, for the treatment of complex cardiac arrhythmia – namely, the most common one, atrial fibrillation –, having already performed thousands of interventions of the kind, since its opening in April 2007. Watch the TVI reportage
