A pioneering operation by cancer specialists 5,000 miles apart has given a 31‑year‑old man a second chance.

The patient was in London and seriously ill. One of the surgeons was in Seattle in his pyjamas. The outcome was a triumph for a revolutionary form of robotic surgery that saved the life of a 31-year-old Harrods salesman.

The operation, carried out at the cancer centre at Guy’s Hospital on May 21, involved a five-hour procedure using a robot named Da Vinci Xi to extract a 5cm tumour attached to two major blood vessels in the abdomen of Mo Tajer, from West Hampstead, London.

Watching proceedings from his living room 4,700 miles away was Jim Porter, the medical director for robotic surgery at the Swedish Medical Centre in Seattle and one of the world’s leading practitioners of laparoscopy, commonly known as keyhole abdominal surgery.

Treating Tajer in a London operating theatre was Archie Fernando, a consultant urological surgeon at Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust. With the help of augmented-reality technology developed in Britain to assist remotely connected surgery, Porter guided Fernando through an intricate sequence of incisions that began with the insertion into Tajer’s body of a tiny camera, giving both surgeons a live video feed. “It was kind of like being the player on the tennis court and having the coach in the wings,” said Fernando. “I was doing the case, but he was making suggestions.” The surgery proved such a success that Tajer awoke feeling no pain and has since left hospital. “I’m already back on my feet,” he said last week. “Every day I wake up and I feel stronger and stronger.”

The unusual path to a pioneering operation began last December when Tajer’s 27-year-old girlfriend, Afaf Ismail, persuaded him to seek medical attention for pain he had been experiencing in his belly. Tajer had studied biochemistry at university and taken a master’s degree that involved cancer-related research. He was working at Harrods while hoping for a job in cancer research. “I thought I had irritable bowel syndrome, to be honest,” he said. When he became ill on a date with Ismail, however, “she forced me to go to A&E”. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer that had spread.

Four cycles of chemotherapy shrank away most of the disease. But scans revealed that a big tumour had attached itself to Tajer’s aorta — the main artery that carries blood away from the heart — and his inferior vena cava, the largest vein in the body. Fernando decided to call in help. She had previously wanted to fly to Seattle to consult Porter about the novel surgery, but the Covid crisis intervened.

Not only could Fernando no longer travel to America, but Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals were filling with virus patients. To save her patient’s life, she opted for remote consultation with Porter and a private operating room at Guy’s cancer centre. www.thetimes.co.uk