Visitor from Saudi Arabia

Last week was intense. I had a visitor in Madrid, Dr. Khalid Al Othman, from Hospital King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre, Jedda, Saudi Arabia. There is a growing interest for the Greenlight HPS system in his country and he came to visit with the objective of learning as much as possible about this laser, as they plan to implement this technology in their department. We started the training programme with four operations on Tuesday. I had scheduled four cases with prostatic sizes of 160, 106, 90 y 45 grams so we had a chance to comment the technical details of the operation. Dr. Al Othman was trained in Canada and Germany, and he was very focused in listening and seeing everything, and I learnt a great deal with his comments and questions... Then on wednesday I picked him up early to go to the airport, we travelled to Barcelona where I had scheduled a surgical session with the famous Gil Vernet family of urologists. We are good friends and I have been going to Barcelona to operate with them regularly. We have decided to strengthen this collaboration in the future. We performed a Greenlight PVP with the 80 watt laser, and it was a good oportunity for Dr. Al Othman to realise the differences between the 120 watt HPS and the 80 watt Greenlight.


We also had a chance to discuss thoroughly urethral stenosis treatment, one of the passions of Dr. Gil Vernet, a true expert in this field.

We returned to Madrid later that night because we had a very intense session the next morning. On thursday I had scheduled 5 patients, this time prostatic sizes were smaller, 130, 80, 60, 45 and 9 grams, and the session was uneventful. Again the conversations with Dr. Al Othman were enjoyable, he is a sharp urologist and he was able to grasp the subtleties of PVP, he could see almost every kind of patient and he learned all the surgical tips and tricks. In one of the operations in a patient with a 130 gram prostate I used a suprapubic trocar to enhance irrigation, and I delivered 800.000 joules. I recorded this operation and I hope to be able to offer it here soon.

I have been invited to travel to Saudi Arabia soon to help Saudi urologists to learn the technique with the new HPS greenlight Laser. I look forward to that.