Telesurgery: current status and strategies for latency reduction.

Telesurgery is a rapidly evolving field in robotic assisted surgery that allows surgeons to operate on patients remotely with the help of robotic systems. This has allowed increased access to specialized care reducing geographic barriers and improving overall surgical outcomes in remote locations. An important challenge that hinders its widespread adoption is latency period which is primarily a delay that exists in data transmission between the surgeon and the robotic system. It is essential to determine strategies that can reduce it to ensure greater precision, dexterity, and patient safety. A literature review was conducted using PubMed, Embase, Google Scholar, and Cochrane Library. After screening the articles for relevance, data were synthesized to present a narrative review on the current challenges and emerging solutions in latency reduction. Those articles were included that discussed telesurgery with latency periods, network infrastructure, AI driven latency compensation, and cybersecurity. After removing 8 duplicates, a total of 238 articles were identified in the literature search out of which 175 articles were excluded after title and abstract screening done by two independent reviewers. 63 full text articles were assessed for eligibility. Latency period greatly impacts telesurgical performance with an ideal value being less than 200 ms. This threshold is essential for effective surgical precision, and safety. The adoption of ultra-low latency 6G wireless networks, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence can enhance telesurgical performance. Ethical, legal, and cybersecurity challenges must be addressed for widespread adoption of telesurgery. Latency in telesurgery arise due to a multitude of factors, including network infrastructure, geographic barriers, cybersecurity protocols, hardware, and software limitations. AI-based algorithms, edge computing, advancements in 5G technology, along with optimum haptic feedback mechanisms are promising solutions in reducing latency.