GUANGZHOU -- A Chinese medical team has performed a groundbreaking remote robotic eye surgery, using a 5G-connected robot to treat a patient over 4,000 kilometers away.

The procedure, a retinal injection, was performed on Sunday by surgeons in the southern city of Guangzhou who remotely controlled a robotic arm at a hospital in Urumqi, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

The surgery, performed with micron-level precision, marked a significant step in leveraging technology to bridge the medical resource gap between developed coastal regions and remote areas.

After the robot in Urumqi positioned the microscopic needle on the patient's eye, surgeons in Guangzhou took remote control. They guided the needle to the surface of the retina, pierced it to a pre-determined depth, and injected the medication.

The entire remote surgery took less than seven minutes, with the network remaining stable and the robot responding smoothly without any tremor.

Retinal sub-injection is a meticulously delicate microsurgical technique employed to salvage vision in blinding disorders such as submacular haemorrhage.

"This clinical surgery marks a key leap from feasibility to practicality in the field of remote high-precision ophthalmic surgery in China," said Lin Haotian, the project's lead, from Sun Yat-sen University's Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center.