SURGEON OPERATES ON PATIENT 1,000 MILES AWAY
A prostate cancer patient in Gibraltar has been operated on remotely by a surgeon in London.
On Wednesday, Prof Prokar Dasgupta, a leading robotic urological surgeon, performed a prostatectomy – a surgical removal of the prostate – on Paul Buxton, who was more than 1,000 miles away.
The surgeon said it was “almost as if I was there”, with a lag time of just 0.06 seconds between him moving a tool in London and the robot carrying out the operation.
Prof Dasgupta hailed Britain’s first remote surgery as a “milestone”.
Mr Buxton, 62, said he was happy to be the “guinea pig”, because of the lack of facilities in Gibraltar.
He said the operation, which is known as telesurgery, had taken Gibraltar from the “Championship to the Champions League” in terms of access to surgery.
Mr Buxton was the first of two test cases, with his operation being the first official remote surgery.
The only hospital in Gibraltar is St Bernard’s at Europort in the north of the territory. Residents with more complex needs usually travel further afield, including to the UK’s mainland, for NHS care.
Mr Buxton, who is originally from Burnham-On-Sea in Somerset but moved to Gibraltar 40 years ago.
After receiving a prostate cancer diagnosis after Christmas, he was expecting to join the NHS waiting list and to travel to England for care, saying patients needed to travel to London or Madrid for any major surgeries.
But he was given the opportunity to be the first patient to have the treatment done remotely and jumped at the chance.
“A lot of people actually said to me: ‘You’re not going to do it, are you?’” he said. “I thought, I’m giving something back here.”
“We’ve literally gone from being in the Championship to the Champions League as far as surgeons are concerned,” he added.
Mr Buxton, who owns a transport company, added: “If I hadn’t gone for the telesurgery in Gibraltar, then I would have had to have flown to London, I would have had to go on the NHS waiting list, get the procedure done and I would have probably been in London for three weeks.
“So I thought: ‘This is a no-brainer.’ And it is pioneering for Gibraltar, because you don’t need to leave Gibraltar.”
Prof Dasgupta, who leads The London Clinic’s Robotic Centre of Excellence, said: “The surgery was a milestone. It went extremely well.”
He said they used a “robot with a 3D HD camera with four arms” that “is completely controlled from a console, which is like a computer console, using high-speed lines”.
A team on the ground in Gibraltar was standing ready to take over as a precaution in case the connection dropped.
The London Clinic and Gibraltar Health Authority collaborated on the project, using the Toumai robotic system, made by medical technology company Microport, to perform the operation.
Prof Dasgupta said the telesurgery meant patients could be saved from the “vast expense and inconvenience” of travelling for care.
He added: “This gives us the opportunity to treat patients in remote areas and smaller communities by literally being able to take the best surgeon anywhere.”
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Prof Dasgupta performed another prostatectomy on an unnamed 52-year-old man, also in Gibraltar.
The console in the UK was connected to the robot in Gibraltar via fibre optics, with a backup 5G connection.
Prof Dasgupta will perform the procedure again on March 14, which will be live-streamed to 20,000 leading urological surgeons at the European Association of Urology Congress.
2026-03-06T06:35:41Z
