Dundee has just helped achieve the world’s first remote transatlantic stroke treatment

Professor Grunwald from the university (Picture: Medicine, University of Dundee

Dundee has played a key role in a world-first medical breakthrough that could change how stroke patients are treated in the future.

Using new robotic technology, a team at the University of Dundee has helped carry out the first-ever remote and transatlantic stroke thrombectomy. This means doctors were able to perform a complex procedure from one side of the world to the other.

Professor Iris Grunwald and her team at Dundee’s Image Guided Therapy Research Facility worked with a surgeon based in Florida in the United States.

Together, they used Sentante’s robotic system to perform the treatment on a specially prepared human body used for research. This showed that experts could use technology to perform life-saving surgery from thousands of miles away.

A thrombectomy is a special procedure used to remove a blood clot from the brain during a severe stroke. It’s known to be one of the most effective ways to save lives and prevent long-term damage. However, not everyone can access it. In Scotland, only around 2% of stroke patients currently receive this treatment.

By proving that thrombectomies can be done remotely, this achievement could help more patients get treatment faster, no matter where they live. It could mean that in the future, people in areas without specialist stroke doctors could still get expert care in time to save their lives.

Professor Grunwald said this world-first marks “a new era” for stroke care and demonstrates how technology can help close the gap in access to life-saving treatment.