Surgeons perform pioneering op

PARIS, France -- A U.S. surgical team has performed a ground-breaking operation by remote-control on a patient 4,000 miles away in France.

Using state-of-the-art telecommunications technology, a medical team in New York sent high-speed signals to robots for a gallbladder operation on a patient in France.

Doctors dubbed the 54-minute procedure "Operation Lindbergh" -- in honour of Charles Lindbergh and his breakthrough solo flight across the Atlantic.

The operation's success raises the possibility of remote robot surgery on wounded soldiers on battlefields or astronauts in space.

It also means that patients may have access to top surgeons without having to travel.

The delicate procedure was carried out earlier this month by Dr Jacques Marescaux, of France's Research Institute Against Cancers of the Digestive Tract.

Marescaux was in New York from where he monitored the patient on a screen and used tools connected to sensors.

The signals sped across the Atlantic through fibre-optic lines to robots that operated on a 68-year-old woman in Strasbourg.

The patient had no complications and was released from the hospital two days later.

The procedure is revealed in the latest issue the science journal "Nature."

It was the first operation of its kind.

Previously, such operations would have endangered patients because of communications delays but the success was the culmination of two-and-a-half years of research by French telecommunications group France Telecom.

It technicians had to find a way to transmit a sharp image long-distance with almost no time lapse and no break down.

The signals sped through the fiber-optic network with an average delay of only 150 milliseconds.

"In my monitor, the quality of the image was high-definition television, and I had no perception of delay," Marescaux said.

"We were sure we were able to do something very safe for the patient."

The medical team received clearance from ethics committees before the operation, and 80 people were on hand -- some in New York, some in Strasbourg -- in case things went wrong.

The team had performed the same procedure on pigs before searching for a human candidate.

The patient, whose name was not given, agreed to the procedure and said she was happy to be part of a technological advance.