Alan gets a feel for remote surgery, practicing on pig entrails

In this segment, Alan Alda meets the pioneers behind a new kind of surgery. He visits first with Pentagon researchers who sought to shorten the time it took to get expert medical attention to injured soldiers in the field. Remotely-operated robotic instruments offered a solution. Under the watchful eye of surgeon Jim Bowersox, Alan reprises his role on M*A*S*H* as he tries his hand at sewing up pig entrails using these special surgical tools.

But at Ohio State Medical Center, Dr. Randall Wolf and Dr. Robert Michler have taken the military's program to the next level. Wolf asks viewers - why do surgeons have to make such big incisions, when most of the work they do is so small and precise? The answer: to get their hands inside the patient. If technology could allow a surgeon to operate remotely using tiny robotic "hands," the result would be safer, less invasive procedures.

Dr. Wolf compares the new tiny robotic tool to his surgeon's hands

Using a small incision. Wolf and Michler insert miniature instruments and a tiny camera into the body of their patient, a commercial airline pilot grounded by a blocked coronary artery. Seated at a console some distance away, Wolf performs a complex procedure in less time and with far less stress to the patient's body than traditional methods would allow. Thanks to the power of technology, surgeons and their patients might one day be half a yard, or even half a world apart.