London Surgeon Performs Remote Robot Surgery on Patient 1,500 Miles Away

A groundbreaking medical procedure has seen a surgeon in London successfully carry out robot-assisted cancer surgery on a patient located about 1,500 miles away in Gibraltar.

The operation marked a major milestone for The London Clinic, which announced it had completed the United Kingdom’s first remote robotic telesurgery on a patient abroad.

The procedure was performed by Prokar Dasgupta, who operated from the clinic’s robotic surgery centre on Harley Street in London. The patient, 62-year-old Paul Buxton, was undergoing treatment at St Bernard’s Hospital.

Using the Toumai robotic surgical system, Dasgupta remotely controlled four robotic arms along with a high-definition 3D camera from a surgical console in the UK. The system transmitted commands with only about 60 milliseconds of delay between the surgeon’s movements and the robot’s actions.

That near-instant response is crucial for delicate procedures such as prostate cancer surgery, where even small delays could affect precision. Medical teams say the latency was low enough for the operation to feel almost like performing surgery in the same room as the patient.

While the surgeon operated remotely, a medical team in Gibraltar remained on standby in case technical issues occurred or the connection failed. However, the prostate removal surgery was completed successfully without complications.

For Buxton, who has lived in Gibraltar for four decades, the remote procedure offered a significant benefit. Instead of traveling abroad to undergo a specialised operation – potentially requiring weeks away from home — he was able to receive treatment locally. Reports indicate he said he felt “fantastic” just days after the surgery.

Although the procedure is being described as a first of its kind in the UK, cross-border robotic surgery is not entirely new. One of the earliest examples was the Lindbergh Operation, when surgeons in New York City remotely removed a patient’s gallbladder in Strasbourg in 2001.

More recently, similar robotic prostate surgeries have been conducted across continents, including a 2024 operation linking Rome and Beijing. Additional long-distance procedures using the Toumai platform have also been performed in parts of Africa.

These developments suggest telesurgery may gradually become a practical option in modern healthcare. If the technology continues to prove reliable, it could allow highly specialised surgeons to treat patients in remote or underserved regions without requiring them to travel long distances for care.

However, experts caution that widespread use of remote robotic surgery still faces challenges. The approach relies heavily on stable high-speed internet connections, often using fibre-optic networks and backup 5G links, and raises questions about infrastructure, safety systems, regulation and cost.

For now, hospitals are likely to treat long-distance robotic surgery as a carefully controlled medical advancement rather than a routine option. Still, the successful procedure demonstrates how technology could reshape the future of complex surgical care.