Doctors Guide Heart Surgery on Little Girl 1,500 Miles Away Via Video

A 4-year-old girl had successful and highly complex heart surgery while the doctors in charge were almost 1,500 miles away.

The girl, identified as Helena, was born with a serious congenital heart defect and also has Down syndrome. Congenital heart defects are conditions present at birth that can affect the structure and function of a baby's heart.

The surgery that she needed was not available in her home city of São Luís, Maranhão state, which is in northeastern Brazil.

In fact, within the country, the operation is usually carried out only in São Paulo, Brazil's largest city, on the other side of the nation from Helena's home.

The girl's parents found out that she would need to undergo the complex surgery when she was 2. But the high cost of the trip to São Paulo was prohibitive for the family.

But this year, the family received an invitation for Helena to participate in a pioneering project that aims to provide access to complex heart surgeries in locations where they previously would not have been available, Brazilian news outlet TV Globo reported.

The project is a partnership between the University Hospital of São Luís and the Instituto do Coração (InCor) in São Paulo. So far, 15 children from the state of Maranhão have participated in the project.

Helena had surgery on May 4 as part of the project at the University Hospital in São Luís with a team of doctors present in real life. But the entire procedure was being monitored remotely in real-time via a video stream by a team of experts at InCor in São Paulo. Those experts observed and guided the whole operation from their location about 1,500 miles away.

To enable the remote surgery, a high-resolution camera was fitted in the operating room and transmitted everything in real-time to the monitoring center in São Paulo over a 5G connection. Surgeons also wore headcams to provide a first-person perspective.

In addition, sensitive microphones were placed around the room to record audio and speech. And the medical devices the team used were connected to the internet so the InCor team could monitor real-time data from them.

Throughout the procedure, which lasted three hours, the InCor team communicated with the surgeons in São Luís, taking them through the operation step-by-step.

In the end, the surgery was a success and Helena spent about 10 days in the hospital before being discharged. She is recovering well at home.

Newsweek has reached out to InCor for comment.

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