Live surgery in Bilbao

Yesterday started the I Symposium Internacional de Cirugía Robótica y Nuevas Tecnologías en Urología, organised by the prestigious urologists group Urología Clínica, from Bilbao. This congress, mainly devoted to robotic surgery, also has a session on lasers for benign prostatic hyperplasia. The panel of experts invited is espectacular, with urologists as Cathelineau, Gastón, Lugnani, Murat, Piechaud, Wilson. I was invited to participate performing a live surgery in a patient with BPH with the new Greenlight HPS (High Performance System) laser in the Virgen Blanca Hospital in Bilbao, while the attendees were in the conference hall at the Museo Marítimo de Bilbao, in a beautiful part of the city. The hospital was equipped with a system to retransmit video and audio to the congress hall.

The patient I operated had a 70 gram prostate with a humungus median lobe, a slightly difficult case, with the intention to show the audience a real life case, rather than a selected and easy BPH case, so they could evaluate the real ability of this laser to deal with real life prostates...
During surgery, Dr. Carlos Hernández, the moderator of the session, asked me questions about the technique, the surgical strategy and the features of the new HPS system.

Surgery was smooth and beautiful, there was no problem at all. I delivered 525.000 joules in 80 minutes. Some colleagues commented they were impressed not to see a single drop of blood. Today I will do a presentation in the congress hall and then I have to split because I have to fly to Venice, where I will attend another medical meeting this weekend.