TORONTO \u2014 A team at St. Michael\u2019s Hospital in Toronto has successfully completed 10 brain angiograms using a robot controlled remotely by a neurosurgeon, paving the way to eventually providing critical stroke care to patients in northern Ontario. <\/p>\n
A brain angiogram is a minimally invasive diagnostic procedure where doctors place a catheter in the femoral artery through the groin and thread it up to the brain, then inject contrast dye that allows the medical team to see any problems in the blood vessels with an X-ray. <\/p>\n
Normally, the doctor is beside the patient manually moving the catheter. But in what the hospital says is a world first, the team performed a series of angiograms where Dr. Vitor Mendes Pereira, head of St. Michael\u2019s neurovascular program, used a computer to remotely control a robot to manoeuvre the catheter through the blood vessels in the patient\u2019s body up into the brain. <\/p>\n
The distance between Pereira and the robot increased gradually throughout the procedures, starting across the room, then from another room in the hospital, and finally from St. Joseph\u2019s Health Centre about six kilometres away. St. Michael\u2019s and St. Joseph\u2019s are both sites of Unity Health Toronto. <\/p>\n
His computer and the robot are connected through an \u201cincredibly fast\u201d fibre optic internet connection, Pereira said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t see any difference on being here in this (operating) room, in the same building or being in another hospital in terms of visualization and also on the surgical experience,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The next step will be to increase the distance between Pereira and the robot to more than 600 km \u2014 the distance from Toronto to the Sault Area Hospital in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. <\/p>\n
After doing more diagnostic angiograms, the team will apply to Health Canada for approval to start a clinical trial using the robotic technology to perform endovascular thrombectomies on stroke patients, using a stent to grab and remove the blood clot in the brain causing the stroke. <\/p>\n
Right now, there\u2019s no one to perform EVTs at the Sault Area Hospital, so patients who have had a stroke have to be transported to the nearest stroke centre in Sudbury, Ont., which takes anywhere from an hour by Ornge air ambulance to three and a half hours by road. <\/p>\n
In many cases, there\u2019s a significant wait time for the air ambulance to arrive in Sault Ste. Marie, said Dr. Laura Stone, medical director of the Sault Area Hospital\u2019s emergency department.<\/p>\n
Every delay in getting treatment after a stroke translates into more neurons dying, which means more disability \u2014 or death \u2014 for the patient.<\/p>\n
\u201cTime is brain,\u201d said Stone. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s difficult knowing that there is a standard of care and a great procedure available that we can\u2019t necessarily offer to our patients here,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a challenging part of working somewhere that\u2019s more remote.\u201d<\/p>\n
But if the Sault hospital has the robot on hand, the EVT can happen there, with Pereira at his computer back in Toronto, remotely steering the catheter and stent into the patient\u2019s brain to remove the clot. <\/p>\n
The St. Michael\u2019s team, led by research program manager and technologist Nicole Cancelliere, will train Sault Area Hospital technologists and other staff on how to set up the robot and insert the catheter. <\/p>\n
Dr. Michael Kutryk, who is both an interventional cardiologist and researcher at St. Michael\u2019s Hospital and the head of cardiology at the Sault Area Hospital, has been helping to establish the partnership between the two health-care centres. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be the difference between somebody being paralyzed and dysarthric \u2014 not able to speak \u2014 compared to somebody walking out of the hospital two or three days later,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Kutryk estimated that the robot-assisted EVTs could be up and running at the Sault Area Hospital late next year or in early 2027. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is kind of a perfect thing to do for a robot because it\u2019s so safe in the human hands, there\u2019s very little that can go haywire and same with the robot if you\u2019re controlling the robot properly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
One of the main risks is if the internet connection between the robot and the surgeon is disrupted, Pereira said, but the connection is rigorously tested and the plan is to always have a backup connection in place.<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s any delay in the robot responding to his manoeuvres, the procedure could be stopped and the team at the hospital would revert to its regular stroke care, which could include transporting the patient. <\/p>\n
Kutryk said it\u2019s not practical for the Sault hospital to hire a dedicated neurovascular specialist to be on standby to do EVTs in person, because there are only about 12 to 15 patients who need the procedure a year. <\/p>\n
But for those patients, the robotic technology will be \u201cgroundbreaking,\u201d said Stone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re increasing the speed to these patients getting this life-saving procedure done.\u201d <\/p>\n
Although Sault Ste. Marie was chosen as the partner hospital for this project, the St. Michael\u2019s team hopes their clinical research with the technology will help patients in other remote areas. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is maybe a little bit \u2018Star Wars,\u2019 but this is going to be a reality, I think, very, very soon in hospitals around the world, Kutryk said. <\/p>\n
The robot used for the brain angiograms was developed by Remedy Robotics, a private company in San Francisco that specializes in cardiovascular interventions.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2025.<\/p>\n
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.<\/p>\n
Nicole Ireland, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 A team at St. Michael\u2019s Hospital in Toronto has successfully completed 10 brain angiograms using a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392,890,47,66],"class_list":["post-282657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-lifestyle","tag-national","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}