A surgeon sits in a conference hall in Rome, his hands moving over a console, while a man with prostate cancer lies on an operating table in Beijing, trusting instruments guided from thousands of kilometers away. What connected them was not a flight or a physical visit, but a stream of light through fiber optic cables and the precision of a robotic system that responded in near real time. It is a scene that invites a simple but profound question: when healing crosses continents through machines and invisible signals, what does it really mean for a doctor to be present with a patient?

A Surgical First That Connected Rome and Beijing in Real Time

In June 2024, urologist Professor Zhang Xu sat at a surgical console in Rome and operated on a man with prostate cancer in Beijing, more than 8,000 kilometers away. Using a Chinese-developed robotic system, he performed a full radical prostatectomy, the first live transcontinental remote robotic prostate removal.

From his console in Italy, Zhang viewed a magnified, real-time image of the patient’s prostate while his hand and foot movements controlled robotic arms at the Third Medical Center of the People’s Liberation Army General Hospital in Beijing. A full surgical team and a back-up surgeon stood by in the operating room, ready to intervene if needed.

The connection relied on high-speed 5G and fiber-optic networks. Engineers closely monitored one critical variable: latency, the time it takes for data to travel between surgeon and robot. During the operation, delay was measured at about 135 milliseconds, well below the 200 millisecond limit many medical studies consider safe for telesurgery, which allowed Zhang to report that it felt almost like operating in person.

The procedure was performed live during the “Challenges in Laparoscopy, Robotics and AI” conference in Rome, where conference chairman Vito Pansadoro described it as a historic moment for surgery and robotics, signaling a new era in how distance and expertise might one day be bridged in the operating room.

How Remote Robotic Surgery Actually Works

To understand why this operation matters, it helps to strip telesurgery down to its essentials. At its core, it is a closed loop between a surgeon’s eyes and hands, a robot’s instruments, and a high speed data link that keeps them synchronized.

On the surgeon’s side, there is a console. Professor Zhang sat at one in Rome, looking into a display that showed a magnified, three dimensional view of the patient’s prostate. His fingers moved tiny controllers that translated his motions into commands, while his feet operated pedals that switched instruments or adjusted the camera.

On the patient’s side in Beijing, robotic arms were docked to the man’s body. These arms held instruments inside the abdomen and a camera that transmitted a continuous video feed. Every subtle movement Zhang made at the console was converted into digital signals, sent across 5G and fiber optic networks, and then translated back into mechanical motion by the robot.

The most important technical variable here is latency, the delay between what the surgeon does and what the robot does in response. If that delay becomes too long, hand eye coordination breaks down and surgery becomes unsafe. Various medical studies suggest that telesurgery should stay below about 200 milliseconds of delay to feel natural and controllable. In this Rome to Beijing operation, the team kept latency around 135 milliseconds, which is why Zhang could say it felt almost the same as operating in person.

Around this digital loop, a very human safety net remained in place: an entire surgical team and a back up surgeon at the hospital in Beijing, ready to take over on the spot if anything went wrong.

From Early Experiments To Real World Telesurgery

What happened between Rome and Beijing has roots in more than two decades of experimentation with distance in surgery. In 2001, French surgeon Jacques Marescaux and colleagues performed the Lindbergh operation, removing a woman’s gallbladder in Strasbourg while he sat at a console in New York. Dedicated fiber lines and a custom robotic system made that transatlantic link possible, but it remained a carefully staged and expensive one off.

For many years, that was the pattern. Telesurgery trials depended on bespoke telecom arrangements and specialized robots. They proved concept but did not easily translate into routine care. Networks were slower and less reliable, and the hardware was still maturing.

The Rome to Beijing prostate surgery signals a shift toward more practical conditions. It relied on 5G and fiber networks that are becoming part of civilian infrastructure in many regions. Research in urology and surgical technology suggests that total delay under roughly 200 milliseconds is compatible with safe telesurgical performance, with skills declining as latency increases beyond about 300 milliseconds. In this case, the 135 millisecond delay placed the team well within the safer end of that spectrum.

The deeper meaning is simple but powerful: if the robot, the network, and the local team are ready, a surgeon’s expertise no longer has to be limited by geography. That idea is beginning to move from headline making feats into cautious, stepwise integration with real clinical systems.

The Human Link in the Robotic Chain

Behind the technical success of the Rome to Beijing surgery is a quieter question: what does it take for a patient, and a medical team, to trust a surgeon who is not physically present?

On paper, the safeguards are clear. The operation in Beijing included a full team and a back up surgeon who could take over immediately if anything malfunctioned. Network engineers monitored latency in real time. Protocols existed for how to respond if the link degraded or failed. In that sense, telesurgery adds extra layers of redundancy around a familiar core of surgical practice rather than replacing it.

Yet trust is not built on numbers alone. Professor Zhang has acknowledged that for remote surgery, the biggest concern is communication and delay, which is another way of saying that everyone involved must believe the connection is reliable enough to hold a human life. When he later described the latency as barely noticeable and the experience as similar to operating in person, that was not only a technical assessment but also a reassurance to future patients and colleagues.

For the person on the table, consent in this context means more than signing a form. It means agreeing to be cared for through a chain of people, machines, and signals that spans continents, while still trusting that the intention in the surgeon’s hands will reach their body without distortion.

A New Kind Of Presence In Healing

For many people in the healing arts, presence has long meant physical nearness: the doctor at the bedside, the hand on the shoulder, the quiet moment before anesthesia when eye contact offers reassurance. The Rome to Beijing surgery stretches that definition without erasing it. The surgeon’s body stayed in Italy. His attention, skill, and responsibility reached a man in China through light pulses in fiber cables.

From a scientific perspective, what traveled was information and intention encoded as signals, then turned back into motion by a robot and a local team. From a spiritual perspective, this invites a deeper question: how much of healing depends on bodies being side by side, and how much depends on the quality of awareness and care that flows between them?

Telesurgery does not replace human touch, and it should not become an excuse to remove clinicians from patients. If anything, it highlights how many layers of presence can coexist. There is the remote surgeon whose focus must be unwavering, the local team whose hands anchor the procedure in the room, and the patient whose consent and trust connect these worlds.

In that sense, this kind of operation becomes more than a technical feat. It is a reminder that in medicine, as in spiritual practice, distance is only one dimension. The more essential question is how clearly we bring our attention, ethics, and compassion to wherever we are needed.

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