Kuwait’s Ministry of Health says robotic and remote surgery have expanded across several major hospitals and specialist centres, with programmes now covering urology, gastrointestinal surgery, gynecology, orthopedics, thoracic surgery and cardiac procedures as the country builds experience with digitally enabled surgical care.
Ministry Undersecretary Sheikh Dr. Salman Khalifa Al-Sabah told KUNA that robotic surgery is being performed at Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital, Farwaniya Hospital, New Jahra Hospital, Chest Diseases Hospital and the Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Urology Centre, while stressing that technology should be evaluated through patient outcomes, safe practice and sustainable clinical capability.
At Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital, the robotic surgery programme began in 2019 and had reached 1,145 procedures by September 4, 2026 across specialties including urology, bariatric surgery, upper gastrointestinal surgery, hernia repair, colorectal and liver surgery, gynecology and obstetrics, and ear, nose and throat surgery.
The same hospital’s orthopedic department began robot-assisted procedures in January 2024 and had performed more than 115 cases, while New Jahra Hospital began its robotic programme with a first procedure on April 27, 2025 and had reached 155 operations by September 6, 2026.
At Chest Diseases Hospital, the figures provided by the Health Ministry included 30 thoracic procedures and 25 cardiac procedures using robotic technology, adding another set of specialties to the national programme beyond the larger general and specialist hospitals.
Al-Sabah said robotic systems can improve visualization, instrument control and precision and can support less-invasive procedures in suitable cases, but he also said claims about shorter hospital stays or faster recovery should be assessed by procedure and patient condition against alternatives using documented scientific indicators.
Kuwait’s remote robotic surgery programme at the Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Urology Centre began on December 20, 2024 and had completed 15 successful procedures, including 12 international operations and three domestic operations, according to the figures relayed by KUNA.
The 12 international procedures included eight led remotely from Shanghai, two from Strasbourg, one from Muscat and one from Padua, while patients in Kuwait remained under the direct care of medical teams physically present at the centre during the operations.
A July 2025 radical prostatectomy for a patient in Kuwait was led by a Kuwaiti surgeon from Strasbourg during an international surgical conference, and a contemporaneous KUNA report described that case as the ninth remote robotic procedure conducted in Kuwait at that stage of the programme.
Cross-border cooperation later extended to Brazil, where a Kuwaiti medical team performed surgery on a patient at Cruz Vermelha Hospital over a reported distance of 12,034.92 kilometers, an achievement recorded by Guinness World Records on September 23, 2025, while a Brazilian team also performed a remote procedure on a patient in Kuwait.
Domestic remote operations have included three procedures for uterine cancer patients in October 2025 involving teams at Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital and Jahra Hospital, as well as a November 2025 case in which a gallbladder procedure was performed remotely from Farwaniya Hospital while the patient remained at the Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Urology Centre before a separate kidney operation by the centre’s urology team.
The Health Ministry’s account emphasizes that remote surgery requires qualified clinicians beside the patient, clearly defined responsibilities, emergency plans, reliable connectivity, data protection, informed consent and continuing training, so GulfPulse is treating the reported procedure counts as evidence of programme activity rather than proof that robotic or remote surgery is automatically preferable for every patient or condition.
The verified development is the scale and breadth of Kuwait’s current robotic-surgery activity and the documented use of remote procedures across domestic and international links, while future assessment will depend on published clinical outcomes, regulatory development, training standards and the ability of hospitals to maintain safe backup arrangements when technology or communications fail.
