Doctors have completed the world’s first cross-border robot-assisted heart surgery, performing a complex operation on a patient more than 10,000 kilometers away.
According to the Fujian Provincial Government, the procedure took place on October 23, 2025, when Professor Wang Yan, president of Xiamen Cardiovascular Hospital at Xiamen University, and Professor Lionel Leroux from Bordeaux University Hospital in France remotely controlled a surgical robot to operate on a 73-year-old patient in Xiamen, Fujian Province.
The operation was a transcatheter mitral valve repair (TEER), a minimally invasive heart procedure that repairs the valve without open-heart surgery.
Using a high-speed network connection, the surgeons in Bordeaux, France, guided the robot in real time, completing the procedure in about one hour without complications.
Doctors use robot to perform surgery 10,000 km+ away
While the same system has already been used successfully within China, this marks the first time it has been used in a cross-border operation.
Provincial officials praised the achievement as a “major breakthrough in remote cardiac intervention,” saying it demonstrates China’s growing capabilities in advanced medical robotics and cross-border collaboration.
Although remote robotic surgery has existed for decades, including the 2001 “Lindbergh Operation” between New York and Strasbourg, this marks the first time a heart surgery has been performed across national borders.
The patient has made a full recovery and was discharged soon after the operation, with hospital staff describing the result as “near perfect.”
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