Remote robot-assisted surgery; $47 million for offering kickbacks; how salmonella ignores protective bacteria – Morning Medical Update

First remote robot-assisted laparoscopic hysterectomy

Researchers in China completed the first ever remote, robot-assisted, laparoscopic hysterectomy from 745.65 miles (1,200 km) away. The team used the Edge Multi-Port Endoscopic Surgical Robot MP1000 (Edge MP1000) and 5G communication technology, broadcasting the surgery live across the network.

“This achieved the specific requirements of low latency, high precision and high reliability for surgical operations,” Yuanguang Meng, the case’s lead researcher, said in a news release. “Data showed that the bidirectional latency during the surgery was only 19 ms, with a maximum jitter of about 3 ms in rare moments and a rare frame drop rate of approximately 0.2%.”

QOL Medical to pay $47 million for allegedly inducing false claims by offering kickbacks

QOL Medical LLC, a pharmaceutical company, and Frederick E. Cooper, its co-founder and CEO, have agreed to pay $47 million to resolve allegations that the company, with Cooper’s approval, induced false claims to federal health care programs for their CSID drug, Sucraid, by offering free Carbon-13 breath testing services, which they falsely claimed could “rule in or out CSID.” After distributing the breath tests for free to health care providers, recommending they be given to CSID patients, the company used the data to make targeted sales calls for Sucraid to health care providers whose patients had positive CSID results.

“QOL provided free goods to doctors and patients in order to induce prescriptions for the very expensive drug QOL manufactured,” said Joshua S. Levy, JD, acting US attorney for the District of Massachusetts. “…This conduct unnecessarily drained money from the federal health care programs and improperly influenced treatment decisions by physicians and their patients.”

How salmonella can cause infection regardless of protective bacteria

A study out of UC Davis Health, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explains how Salmonella bacteria is able to evade the gut’s natural defenses. Salmonella causes inflammation in the small intestine upon entry, creating an imbalance in nutrients in the gut. The pathogen is then able to use the imbalance to survive and multiply in the colon. “Our findings could lead to new treatments that help support the microbiota during infection,” said Lauren Radlinksi, first author of the study and postdoctoral fellow in the Bäumler Lab at UC Davis Health.